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THE REASON IN_. 


FAITH ages ce 


BY |/ 
RALPH TYLER FLEWELLING 


Professor of Philosophy in the 
University of Southern California 


INTRODUCTION BY 
BISHOP FRANCIS J. McCONNELL 





THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


Copyright, 1924, by 
RALPH TYLER FLEWELLING 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 


Printed in the United States of America 


TO MY STUDENTS 
WHOSE YOUTHFUL EYES HAVE DISCERNED 
THE INVISIBLE 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PRINT TICRTON sa 57 vis RE bias Fist Rae oe ele afelalnne.p a Niele ei, s'9 11 

EW ARDS REE erecta ee Loi en AN aN ote a Lat dial am ie'e, = SENT, LS 
CHAPTER I 

Tar NATURE or Proor In SCIENCE AND IN LIFE...... 17 


The unjustified trust in the all-embracing character 
of scientific explanation—The divergence of proof in 
the two fields—Scientific demonstration inapplicable 
where there is freedom—Scientific demonstration con- 
fined to succession in phenomena—Demonstration in the 
field of self-conscious life a matter of values—lIllustra- 
tion of the inapplicability of scientific proof to self- 
conscious life in the fields of psychology, sociology, and 
religion—Demonstration in the realm of life must be 
individual and particular—The profoundest truths are 
realized not by demonstration but by faith—in the 
individual. 


CHAPTER II 


Tur SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF THE TRUTH..........-+05 


The qualities of truth—not needing defense—human 
truth at best but fragmentary—always subject to test— 
The growing understanding of truth in _history—Reli- 
gious truth subject to development—The validity of 
truth internal—The meaning of revelation—The mean- 
ing of inspiration—The relation of inspiration to infalli- 
bility—The principles by which inspiration is to be tested 
—canonicity general, not specific—the measure of in- 
spiration—importance assigned by the past—The test 
of the author’s claim—The fundamental principles 
stated in the Bible itself—the principles of judgment laid 
down by Jesus—Relation of these reflections to modern 
problems—the problem of present understanding—of 
present prophetic claims—the purpose of inspiration, 
life—The place of historic authority—the ultimate 
authority the light which lighteth every man that com- 
eth into the world. 


32 


8 CONTENTS 


CHAPTER III 


Tue Nature OF EXISTENCE...........-- ROE tel Vicehaihe 

The meaning of existence soluble in practice only— 
Two classes of explanation, impersonal and personal— 
The impersonal ones—materialistic mechanism—resort 


to “function” as explanation—primal accident of. 


matter and motion—the pantheistic conclusions of 
absolutism—All impersonalistic forms of explanation 
commit to the infinite regress—-The personalistie expla- 
nation—an intelligible world springing from intelligence 
—Is existence static or creative?—if static impossible to 
posit change as more than a redistribution of unchanging 
units—quality is made an illusion—If existence is cre- 
ative—it must be considered as intelligence residing in the 
cell or atom—or as supreme intelligence transcending 
the process—Is existence a relation to the temporal and 
spatial under the form of life?—Are there reasons for 
assigning intelligence to existence? 


CHAPTER IV 


Tur REASONABLENESS OF THE INCARNATION. .....ee08 


A new approach to the problem needed and one that 
will disclose its vital importance—Jesus’ thought of the 
incarnation grew out of His consciousness of the Father- 
hood of God—The Jewish thought of Fatherhood one 
of limitation—that of Jesus all-embracing—Direct words 
of Jesus on the Divine Fatherhood—a fatherhood of 
love—realized through sonship—On an eternal foun- 
dation—and forming an eternal appeal—definitely set 
forth in the parable of the prodigal—The divine father- 
hood taught by Jesus’ conception of Messiahship—com- 
pleted in his thought of the office and work of the Holy 
Spirit—An incarnation does not lower God but exalts 
man—Admission of Christ’s moral perfection implies 
Deity—lIncarnation demanded by the problem of evil— 
Life the supreme authority. 


CHAPTER V 


Tue MEANING AND FUNCTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.... 


The need to personalize Deity—to establish the com- 
mon identity of goodness—Separation from the Spirit 
a tragedy—The need to provide a ground of authority— 
the source of living guidance. 


64 


82 


115 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER VI 


PRAYER AND THE WORLD-ORDER ........2--200seeeeee 


The modern apathy toward prayer—is it reasonable? 
—The conception of prayer as a changing of the supreme 
order—The threefold purpose of prayer—to bring the 
true adjustment of man to the divine order, not to ad- 
just God to our order—to put the individual in cooper- 
ation with God—to accomplish the end sought—Prayer 
as a source of power—Prayer and the divine character. 


CHAPTER VII 


Sn, PUNISHMENT, AND PERSONALITY. .......--00-005: 


Need to find the underlying principle—Sin a failure 
to cooperate with God—a dwarfing of personality—an 
offense against the personality of others—the meaning of 
unpardonable sin—Punishment inherent in personality— 
The three laws of character—Intensification of punish- 
ment through vanishing of spatial and temporal order. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Tus CHARACTER OF WoRLD REDEMPTION..........-+- 


The conflict between immanence and transcendence 
as world-views—The transcendental view in conflict 
with the order of nature and of life—with the fact of 
personality—unethical in character—conflictingly dualis- 
tic—reverses the divine character—The developmental 
view too easily indifferent—but capable of setting forth 
the ethical side of individual redemption—to show 
world-redemption as a cooperative process—to empha- 
size its universal character—as including fullness of 
life in the present world—and nature as well—and not an 
end in itself—The source of cataclysmic speculation— 
The cataclysmic teachings of Jesus—The noncataclysmic 
character of the latest gospel—Immanence and tran- 
scendence reconcilable. 


CHAPTER Ix 


PosstsLtE Error, Pain, anp Evi, tHE SCHOOLMASTERS 
Pe MPM ee ra, Loci blic cs Die ot br orSage/ es he lbottel ah ese te ac 6, abel ek 
Necessity for a distinction between evil and its pos- 
sibility—Error and the growth of knowledge—Pain and 


149 


171 


2038 


10 CONTENTS 


the advance of civilization—pain self-preservative— 
its social uses—Evil and moral self-hood—the solution 
of these problems personal. 


CHAPTER X 


Tur CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY.........-0+.005- 

Continuance of the belief in immortality due to the 
nature of the human spirit—Arises from the time-tran- 
scending nature of experience—not from dreams or 


apparitions—but from the temporal consciousness— 


and is functional—It attends a timeless order of living— 
is in accord with the logic of life and growth—by a false 
emphasis is relegated entirely to the future—Immor- 
tality is individual or nothing—non-personal immortality 
meaningless—It is outside the field of scientific demon- 
stration. 


CHAPTER XI 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY ¢\dicisias. .aNbios Rich eiole Mee em eonae 
The new interest in personality—The meaning of 


personality—in its simplest terms _ self-consciousness. 


and self-direction—the distinguishing features of human 
personality freedom and creativity—Divine personality 
necessary but mysterious—The meaning of creativity— 
creation ex nthilo—necessity for first cause in all causal 
explanation—Personality a first cause—cultural and 
social consequences from denial of this—Relation of 
creativity to personality—The release of the higher 
powers from harmony—with physical environment— 
with society—with one’s moral and spiritual ideals— 
oneness with God and the universe—Harmony of spirit 
and the constructive imagination. 


214 


228 


INTRODUCTION 


Proressor FLEWELLING is known in philo- 
sophical circles throughout this country as an 
earnest and forceful expositor of personalism. 
It is from the point of view of personalism that 
Tur Reason IN Fairtu is written. For Doctor 
Flewelling the only real values in the world are 
those that relate themselves to persons. We 
may well be thankful that at the close of a 
period of thought which overexalted scientific 
processes in themselves on the one hand, and 
which bowed down before abstract conceptions 
on the other, we have put before us a book 
which bids us dare to think again of personality, 
human and divine, as the end for which all 
physical and intellectual systems are merely 
instrumental. 

If it seems to any readers that at points here 
and there in his discussion Professor Flewelling 
speaks a little overconfidently of the spiritual 
serviceableness of some factors in the universe— 
as, for example, in his discussion of such themes 
as the problem of pain—let them temper their 
criticism with thankfulness that a keenly 


thoughtful mind thus regally claims all forces 
ll 


12 INTRODUCTION 


of the universe as servants of the soul. We 
have been so long browbeaten both by material- 
istic and by abstractly idealistic philosophy that . 
we have literally come to be afraid to call our 
souls our own. This book helps us to feel not 
merely that our souls are our own, but that 
souls are the only possessions worth having. 

There is in this book a notable departure from 
the customary language of theology. Those 
who have thought only in the customary terms 
will at first feel somewhat lost in Professor 
Flewelling’s pages. I am confident, however, 
that before the open-minded reader finishes the 
book he will find his faith in the essential things 
grounded anew in reason, or in reasons, rather, 
for with Doctor Flewelling persons are reasons, 
the only reasons worth taking into account. 


Francis J. McConneE.t. 


PREFACE 


Tus book is not written primarily for those 
whose faith is unquestioning. It is, rather, 
for those who have been shaken by the fre- 
quent claims of scientism to the sole knowl- 
edge of reality or by the abrogation (on the 
part of a certain type of religionism) of reason 
as necessary to faith. Our age is nothing if 
not scientific. Whether we travel, fight, eat, 
sleep, or dream (since Freud) we do it by 
science. So far have we gone in this process 
that not infrequently we hear some voice 
proclaiming the unreality of all which cannot 
be reduced to the pint cup of scientific meas- 
urement. One should scarcely know whether 
his mother’s love is worth consideration since 
there are some to tell him it is naught but 
an example of chemism. Out of this absurd 
overemphasis of scientism has grown a demand 
for demonstration in religion which religion, 
in the nature of the case, cannot meet because 
it is of another field and order. But some 
one says, “Is there not a science of religion?” 
Yes, truly, but not in the same sense that 


there is a science of botany or of physical 
13 


14 - PREFACE 


phenomena. When we speak of the science 
of religion we are using science in a different 
sense without knowing it. Religion, like all 
human values, is not commensurable in scien- 
tific terms. It is not, therefore, unreal; it is 
one of the sureties of human experience reached 
only by faith. We would have exactly the 
same difficulty proving by science the existence 
of freedom that we would meet in a scientific 
demonstration of God. So far as science goes 
there is and can be no freedom. Freedom is, 
however, so basic a reality in human expe- 
rience that upon the assumption of its reality 
all the institutions of society are built. 

Just as the time will never come when free- 
dom can be safely discarded from the realm 
of reality and reason, even so the great funda- 
mentals of faith are built into the very nature 
and functioning of man and cannot be dis- 
allowed without the loss of that which is most 
significant to life. He who deems it necessary 
to hide the light of religious truth under a 
bushel, lest the winds of investigation blow 
it out, has mistaken both the value and the 
compulsion of truth. He who marks the 
retreat of the tides of human interest from 
the spiritual allegiances of life and thinks 
them gone out forever, is like the ignorant 
watcher by the sea who vainly imagines that 


PREFACE 15 


the heart of the sea is not faithful to the 
shore. 

So it is the task of philosophy to show that 
truth of any nature is divine, to show there 
is no conflict between a real science and a 
true faith, and to indicate the reason and the 
logic which underlie man’s highest endeavor. 
It is believable that as thinking men realize 
the eternal character of spiritual truth and 
its consonance with the known facts of science, 
they may come into that surety of faith which 
will help in the highest and completest realiza- 
tion of themselves. If any faintest part of 
such a hope shall be realized by the reflections 
of this book, the desire of its author will have 
been achieved. 

Acknowledgments are due to the Methodist 
Review and The Personalist for material first 
published in those journals. 

Tue AUTHOR. 
Los Angeles. 





} 4 
a fakes ot ats 
4 7 avi Min id 
a mr’ 


CHAPTER I 


THE NATURE OF PROOF IN SCIENCE 
AND IN LIFE 


THE world of thought, like the world of 
curative medicine, has been hampered by the 
obsession of the human mind for panaceas. 
One needs not to have lived very long to 
remember the extravagant claims made for 
every discovery possessing any curative value 
or promising such value even remotely. This 
human tendency is due, on the one hand, to 
the labor of thought, a natural inertia for 
resting in easiest conclusions, and, on the 
other, to enthusiasm of the mind for the novel 
idea, the pride in its own discoveries. Before 
it can be healed of false conclusions there 
must needs be many painful disillusionments. 
Even such has been the record in the realm 
of thought: enthusiasm for a one-sided but 
novel view, pride in intellectual achievement 
already won, determination to make the theory 
fit every case, solve every question, meet 
every demand—this is the old man of the 
sea which humanity is forever dragging about. 

One practical result of this tendency has 


been a compartment view of knowledge of the 
17 


18 THE REASON IN FAITH 


world and of life which we frequently dignify 
with the term “specialization.” Against spe- 
cialization there can be no complaint; its 
result is for good if it is specialization which 
bears the enlightenment of some knowledge of 
other fields; but without this, however pro- 
found it may dream itself, it is warped and 
provincial. Its tendency is to forget that 
its field is not the whole of life; to insist on 
furnishing the standards of measurement in all 
other realms, and, if its own norms fail, to 
spend its breath in a withering scorn of unbe- 
lief in the reality of that which it does not 
understand and measure. There is no use 
charging our own age with greater dereliction 
in this than all others. It is only that an 
extreme passion for individualism and a scorn 
for generalization has given us a childish faith in 
our own panaceas. We give small shrift to the 
wisdom of other days. We lack the historic 
sense and are proud of it. We dote upon the 
scientific achievement of our time, which is 
wonderful, and in our unthinking enthusiasm 
follow whatever is offered in its sacred name, 
this being the only divinity that we worship. 


DIVERGENCE OF PROOF IN THE Two FIELDS 


The result has been a sullen and at times 
ignorant distrust on the part of those who 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 19 


felt the demands for faith and idealism in 
life, and too often on the part of the trium- 
phant scientist a tendency to slap faces and 
proclaim the ignorance and bigotry of all 
opposing or doubtful opinions. That which 
neither extremist has perhaps fully realized, 
and perhaps not at all, is that the field of 
demonstration or proof in physical phenomena 
is not identical with the field of demonstration 
in the realm of freedom, that is, where the 
power of human choices enters into the results. 
At this point one hears the clamor of strident 
voices proclaiming that human choice has no 
part in science, but the outcry may be borne 
with calmness because it is belied by every 
scientist every minute that he breathes. Theo- 
retical denial of freedom there is, but tacit 
acceptance of the reality of freedom exists 
with every human relationship that is his. 
To deny freedom is to preach a theory and to 
practice its opposite. 

Since the days of the Comtian positivism 
one would imagine the demarcation between 
that which is the business of science and that 
which is the business of philosophy would be 
very clear, namely, that science can deal only 
with phenomena, their observation, measure- 
ment, and order, being unable scientifically to 
dip into the realm of first causes which is 


20 THE REASON IN FAITH 


philosophical. The positivistic result, however, 
has led far a-field from this to the assumption 
that whatever cannot be measured in terms 
of weight, resistance, or force has no existence 
at all. Thus at a stroke the field of chief 
importance to the living man is obliterated. 
This lack 1s presumed to be supplied by the 
panacea, answer-all, account-for-all of material- 
istic science. : 

Inasmuch as progress, to say nothing of 
comity and good will, can follow only the 
friendly recognition of the rights of both 
parties, let us inquire into the nature of demon- 
stration in the two fields. 


ScIENTIFIC DEMONSTRATION CONFINED TO 
SUCCESSION IN PHENOMENA 


In the physical world we are witnesses of 
succession in phenomena. We can _ unravel 
many of the intricacies of relation which 
exist between objects in the material world. 
The discovery of these relations gives us mastery 
over forces and energies which afford ever- 
widening knowledge and ever-increasing con- 
trol. However intricately we may analyze 
these relations, we cannot find the clue to 
their being. Conjectures there are a plenty, 
some reasonable, some openly at war with 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 21 


the most valuable issues of human life, many 
claiming attention as scientifically proved when 
they are but the most reasonable of present 
hypotheses. We can learn how to handle 
electricity, we can make it carry our burdens 
and perform us service, but why it acts as it 
does, and what the basal reality may be behind 
it, is the problem of metaphysics. Nor is it 
any relief to say there is nothing behind, that 
the act or relation is in itself all; we still have 
to account for the uniformity and the marvel- 
ous coordinations and ends of our world. To 
order an end to questioning at this point is 
to stop when the mind grows most curious 
and most insistent. Obviously, then, we can 
learn nothing more from science than the order 
of and control of phenomena. In this realm 
there are certain assurances which we call 
proofs. They relate to the sequence of phe- 
nomena. Certain combinations bring certain 
results. The only necessary proof is to be 
found in the unvarying outcome. Thus we 
build up a world of normal expectations, and 
so long as phenomena keep within the range 
of normal experience we do not question their 
reality. When phenomena present features 
abnormal to experience our first inquiry is 
whether they appear to others. These, then, 
are the foundations of our judgment of reality 


22 THE REASON IN FAITH 


—-normality in experience and the validity of 
the common-to-all. 


DEMONSTRATION IN THE Fietp oF SELF- 
conscious Lire A Marrer or VALUES 


In the realm of personal values proof of 
this order is out of the question. In ethics 
the question is not what is normal, but, in 
the light of human freedom, what ought to 
be normal. Just as the factors which make 
up the equation in moral action are invisible, 
mental, spiritual, so the necessary sequences 
in moral phenomena are invisible, mental, — 
spiritual. There is no doubt that consistent 
moral action builds up certain intellectual and 
spiritual powers and immoral action weakens 
and tears down, but these powers and values 
can never be gotten truly into terms of foot- 
pounds of energy or the usual measures of 
force. This fact leads the naturalist to discard 
them altogether; but this is to deny the facts 
most important to man’s life and happiness. 
Instead of being practical it is being imprac- 
tical. I am not concerned with the measure- 
ment of released energy represented in the 
smile of my mother or the love of my wife 
or in the abandon of devotion on the part 
of my child. These are not made real to me 
by adopting terms of blood pressure. They 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 23 


are themselves the important values of life, 
and their values vanish the moment I assume 
them to be anything but free. The material- 
istic psychologist may work his head off to 
prove an exact ratio between incoming im- 
pulse and outgoing energy, and assert in all 
self-confidence that what I call soul or spirit 
is only necessary chemical reaction, but to 
do so will yield me no whit of knowledge, joy, 
or better practice. The all-important value 
to me is the voluntariness of these responses 
on the part of mother, wife, and child. To 
deny the phenomena of love altogether might 
be scientific, but it is not practical, nor is it 
in accordance with the needs of life. Great 
value comes from the scientific study of the 
chemistry of food, but for the individual the 
possession of a stomach is practically more 
important. Denial of the stomach because by 
the usual laws the digestive juices should 
attack and break down its walls would be 
just about on a plane of intelligence with that 
scientist who would deny the moral, ethical, 
and spiritual realities of life because he can- 
not account for them by material measure- 
ments. Since when has it been considered 
scientific to deny that which we are unable 
to understand? 

In life the nearest approach toward scientific 


24 THE REASON IN FAITH 


proof is this: Does such or such a system of 
moral choices build up in me a normal atti- 
tude toward life, toward my fellow men, toward 
the moral values, so that thereby I am con- — 
scious of my best self-realization? Are these 
moral choices such as to commend themselves 
to right-thinking men everywhere? Should 
they prove themselves in keeping with life, 
with the functioning of the highest faculties 
of the human spirit, and are they of such 
nature as to win the allegiance of lovers of 
good generally? Here I should have in the 
order of practical living, in the realm of the 
moral and spiritual, that which corresponds to 

proof in the field of the material. | 


ILLUSTRATION OF THE INAPPLICABILITY OF 

ScrentiFic Proor to Seur-conscious Lirr 

The impossibility of making intelligible appli- 
cation of material standards in the realm of 
human freedom is well illustrated by the 
frequent misuse of statistics. In the field of 
psychology it is possible to go scientifically 
so far as to note physical and mental corre- 
spondences, times, strength, and sequences of 
reaction, etc. Statistics may be gathered 
which show the average and indicate what 
might be called the norm of action. Such 
statistics carefully taken could not fail to be 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 25 


of very great value, but as applied to any 
individual case they might be without value. 
Just as the actuary may tell you by reference 
to his tables your exact life expectancy with- 
out thereby predicting the age at which you 
will die, so in all cases involving human choice 
or freedom there is no assurance that the 
individual will approach the norm. The 
teacher who confidently expects each pupil 
to live up to the teachings of her psychology 
is in for disillusionment and failure. There 
are always the exceptional cases in which she 
will have to fall back on her own wit and 
judgment. 

Social statistics, if they are to possess any 
value at all, must be gathered with unusual 
care and used with rare judgment. Otherwise 
they may be very misleading. One must know 
who the canvassers of social statistics were 
and their method of approach. Furthermore, 
one needs to know something of the honesty, 
intelligence, and interest of the people who 
answered the questions. Even such simple 
statistics as the number living in a_ house, 
the variety of religious beliefs, literacy, and 
sanitary accommodations are dependent on the 
intelligence, willingness, interest, and honesty 
of the person interviewed. Neither does the 
external circumstance, number of bathtubs, 


26 THE REASON IN FAITH 


presence or absence of windows, give so much 
of a line upon the character or cleanliness of 
the inhabitants as is sometimes dreamed and 
frequently played up with convincing flourish 
and great show of numerical precision. The 
possession of a bath does not insure its right- 
ful use, nor the absence of one prevent bathing. 
Darkness and narrow quarters may house 
people of exceeding cleanliness, while light and 
room may be the portion of the unsanitary 
and uncleanly. All should have an equal 
chance to live under sanitary conditions. 
Some would immediately convert a palace 
into a pig-sty. The slums exist partly through 
the inhuman greed of the landlords and the 
wicked tyranny of sweaters, but also in part 
because there are people who would feel at 
home nowhere else. In every case out of 
the thousands of items gathered there are 
differences and peculiarities springing out of 
human choices, and these manifestations of 
freedom which cannot be gotten into statis- 
tics of any kind are exactly the ones of the 
most importance. 

Religious statistics must be approached with 
an even greater measure of caution just to 
the degree that results in this realm are even 
more idealistic, more intangible than in any 
other. While every normally functioning reli- 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 27 


gious institution should show consistent numer- 
ical gains, there might be specific instances 
in which the largest real gain would be indi- 
cated by a loss of numbers. Counting the 
hands raised is not necessarily to discover the 
number of souls saved. Reporting the number 
of calls made is well-nigh useless unless one 
can indicate something of a religious nature 
that has been accomplished. No reckoning 
can be made of the worth, value, and results 
of a life of humble integrity and true devo- 
tion and sacrifice before God. The tragedy of 
our day, as of all days, is our failure to appre- 
ciate this and our childish faith in the spec- 
tacular and self-assertive. 

It may be a source of sincere grief to the 
psychologist or the social or religious worker 
that he must forever lack the mechanical 
exactness of demonstration possible to science, 
but it is only because his problem is vaster, 
more important, and depending upon values 
that bulk on human freedom. The standards 
of science are applicable here only by a sort 
of perversion which gives a false security, an 
empty appearance of knowledge in a field 
where those standards really do not apply. 
This whole field can be cleared only by the 
passing of the false estimate upon so-called 
scientific demonstration. 


28 THE REASON IN FAITH 


It remains to consider in more detail some 
of the essentials of demonstration in the higher 
ranges of life. Here the problem is compli-. 
cated and gives no promise whatever of satis- 
fying the “scientific” mind. 


DEMONSTRATION IN THE Ream or LiFe 
Must Be InpivipvaL AND PaRTICULAR 


To begin with, demonstration in this field 
must be individual and particular. In any 
event it is a demonstration of value. The 
seeming paradox of this position is well illus- 
trated by the problem of pain. Why there 
should be pain can never be settled upon 
general assumptions. It is one of life’s insol- 
uble questions. Yet the individual can solve 
it in his own experience by making it work 
for him a spiritual triumph over all adversities, 
a growing moral self-control, a broader social 
spirit and depth of character. There is no 
misfortune of life which cannot be met and 
its problem solved in this way. As Dunsany 
puts it, “Fate cannot hurt one if he smiles 
at her.” In addition the problem must be 
soluble by each individual, and here is the 
real paradox; it is not perhaps soluble by 
society as a whole. As a matter of fact, one 
reason we cannot solve it for all life is because 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 29 


we look over such a limited landscape, the 
limits of space and time narrow our vision 
to the here and now. We read but a chapter 
in the book of life, and it is not surprising if 
we miss some of the plot. And perhaps it is, 
after all, an Eternal Wisdom which permits 
us to spell out the lesson painfully and day 
by day, that our curiosity may not go stale 
until we have been built up in our own minds 
and souls as independent and self-respecting 
selves. 


Tue PrRorounpEsT TRUTHS ARE REALIZED 
Not sy Demonstration Bout spy Faitu 


In the second place, we must remember 
that the proof of ethical or spiritual values 
lies not only in actual results but also in ideals 
pursued. Just as the value of the school is 
not to be concluded from the number of fault- 
less copy books and perfect examination papers, 
but, rather, in the expanding ideals of culture 
imbibed, the forward look and the inspiration 
of the pupil toward independent culture, so 
likewise it is unfair to judge of religion by 
the immediate flawlessness attained, but, rather, 
by the general trend toward ideals that mean 
not only the betterment of the individual but 
the general moral advance of society. One 
is to judge of ethical and spiritual reality, 


30 THE REASON IN FAITH 


then, not only by the experience of the indi- 
vidual but also by the ideal involved and the 
relation of this ideal to future society and its 
general adaptability to the human mind. 

Last of all, regard must be had to the fact 
that the profoundest ethical and _ spiritual 
interests are capable of demonstration to the 
individual alone. An element of faith is essen- 
tial. Nor is this condition peculiar to spiritual 
values. What boots it that the clown who 
watches the working out of an equation in 
differential calculus declares he ‘‘cannot see 
it’? One would be quite justified in saying, 
“What of it?” His failure to see makes the 
process of no less practical value to the mathe- 
matician. And, whoever the man, he may 
see if he has a mind and will commit himself 
to study. Loudly proclaiming “We cannot 
see it,’ while it is a popular form of denial, 
is very often a proclamation of intellectual and 
spiritual impotence which should cause shame 
rather than pride. One takes the deeper facts 
of life as one does the sun, conscious of the 
normality of his shining and having faith in 
the ultimate results of to-day’s sowing. So 
some loyalties, some loves, some ideals, some 
aspirations, some moralities, some visions of 
time, eternity, freedom, God are necessary to 
the normal and highest functioning of life; 


THE NATURE OF PROOF 31 


we take them on faith, and the only justifi- 
cation they need is the justification of results. 
And in its final analysis the best demonstration 
of life cannot be had by mathematical pre- 
cision nor by observation of scientific phe- 
nomena, but in living itself. That which 
runs into the realm of moral values can be 
truly judged only by him who is himself loyal 
to these values, just as the untrained man 
cannot properly be the judge of astronomical 
phenomena or of chemical reaction. Always 
the secrets of life are for those who train them- 
selves to understand and appreciate, as even 
“the secrets of the Lord” are for “those that 
fear him.” 


CHAPTER il 


THE SELF-J USTIFICATION OF THE 
TRUTH 


In the field of thought and knowledge we 
still linger between the skeptics who make a 
scoff of knowledge and those who feel called 
upon to defend truth in the fear that other- 
wise it may perish from the earth. Neither 
mood is good. The skeptic mood ends in 
futility and failure. Mere denial is a weak- 
ness. Without positive beliefs and convic- 
tions the practical issues of life fail and man 
becomes useless both to himself and society. 
One should include in his litany the prayer 
to be delivered from the know-nothing aitti- 
tude. The defense mood is likewise prone to 
confine itself to theory and so to lose the 
practical side of its vaunted possessions alto- 
gether. If one is quite sure he has the truth, 
he does not fear its overthrow. For truth can 
never be proved untrue. Falsehood may 
flourish for a time but cannot permanently 
hold the confidence of mankind. Truth needs 
not the bolstering of authority. It is never 
true on authority or by reason of authority. 


It is true because it meets human needs or the 
32 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 33 


eventual demand of the human spirit, because 
it fits in with life, because it is in keeping with 
the highest human ideals, ““because it works,” 
to use a phrase of pragmatism. In the last 
analysis it is true because it is the truth. It 
will in the long run prove its own justification. 
“Wisdom is still justified of her children,” 
or, as the Revised Version puts it, “of her 
works.” 

Let us put aside, then, every fear and set 
our hearts to the fullest use of such truth 
as we have, glad if perchance we may be able 
to approximate more closely than those who 
have gone before us. For only that truth is 
valuable which we can in some measure live 
by. If we really believe it and it gets into 
our lives, it will shine out upon the world 
around us with convincing power. We shall 
not need to give it verbal justification. It 
will already have been put in the most con- 
vineing way. 


Human Trutu at Best But FRAGMENTARY 


The ghost of an ancient misunderstanding 
has arisen out of the modern doctrine of rel- 
ativity. Just as the Sophists misused the 
truth involved in relativity to break down 
the reality of both intellectual integrity and 
the moral sanctions, so some of our modern 


34 THE REASON IN FAITH 


thinkers are drawing a like shallow conclusion. 
The heart of relativity lies not in the assump- 
tions of skepticism, that we are really incapable 
of approaching reality, but, rather, in the 
assertion that the universe is a system of rela- 
tions. This truth may be asserted without 
any fear of abrogating or weakening either 
the intellectual or moral sanctions. [If it is 
to be maintained that the universe is a sys- 
tem of relations, we gather at once the frag- 
mentary nature of any truth of which we 
may consider ourselves possessors. Such a 
view is sure to meet with disfavor from the 
dogmatic scientist and also from the dog- 
matist in philosophy and religion. A petty 
and provincial pride drives us to assert com- 
pleteness of knowledge. It is distasteful to 
the small mind to confess ignorance or partial 
knowledge. Moreover, there are more power- 
ful motives to drive us on. To admit the 
fragmentary and partial nature of our truth 
gives promise of no sure anchorage, and anchor- 
age is what the average man most desires. 
If he can get his truth into some form that 
seems to him final, unchangeable, or grounded 
upon everlasting, infallible and known author- 
ity, the purpose of learning and faith seems 
to be achieved. Particularly does pride respond 
to the notion of putting all future generations 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 35 


to the test of one’s own appreciations and 
discoveries. The chief result achieved by 
this is deadening to knowledge and to religion. 


ALWays SuBsEcT to TEst 


There is no truth which does not have to 
meet momentarily the judgment of life. It 
has to rewrite itself into the history of every 
generation as it comes along and again and 
again rejustify itself. How could it be other- 
wise, since truth gets no real hold upon us, 
possesses no real meaning for us, except as 
we work it out in life? The multiplication 
table as some of us learned it was a mere sing- 
song which at the time had no real issue in 
life. We later discovered that thirteen times 
thirteen had a very practical relation to our 
welfare in business and if we had not possessed 
the knowledge as taught we would by the 
very needs of life have been compelled to 
make a multiplication table of our own. At 
any rate the multiplication table possessed 
meaning for us only when we discovered its 
relation to our own experience. Why does 
not some defender of truth rise up to defend 
the multiplication table? The reason is that 
its practical need is too obvious and too ma- 
terial for question. If the need were in the 


36 THE REASON IN FAITH 


higher reaches touching the deeper matters of 
the Spirit, we should have regarding it both 
defenders of the faith and agnostics. | 


Tur GRowinc UNDERSTANDING oF TRUTH 
IN History 


Unrest, change, development, growth, these 
have seemed to many the antithesis of per- 
fection. We have conservatives in every 
realm willing to live only by the past and 
unwilling to venture any experiment. But it 
is fair to say that throughout history the one 
characteristic of living beings and of living 
thoughts has been unrest and change. It is 
the way life has of manifesting itself. With- 
out it there is only death. He who fears the 
growing pains of increasing knowledge, faith, 
or institutions would substitute death for life 
and has no deep understanding of the nature 
of the universe. 

If the universe is a system of relations, we 
cannot know all about a specific thing until 
we know all its possible relations. Such ad- 
mission may be a blow to our mental or spir- 
itual pride, but it should lead to that humility 
which favors learning. To say that the uni- 
verse is a system of relations which we cannot 
altogether know until we know all is not to 
say that we can know nothing. It is not to 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 37 


deny the reality of the relations already puz- 
zled out. This view has been the fertile source 
of agnosticism, a sort of “all-or-nothing”’ 
theory that has beset us. It was a feeling 
that if we discover any knowledge to have 
been partial, it must be forever entirely abro- 
gated. We pride ourselves over the past, 
as if we at last, the climax of the ages, were 
the sole discoverers and possessors of truth. 
With unperceiving eye toward the future we 
do not see that to-morrow will discard many 
of our cherished opinions to its own benefit. 
With the coming of the Copernican we dis- 
card the Ptolemaic. Is it because the Ptolemaic 
was false? We have so assumed. But did 
not the astronomers of Ptolemaic times lay 
the foundation of the Copernican advance? 
Did they not from the geocentric standpoint 
faithfully plot the various relations of stars, 
planets, and earth? Their work was well 
and painstakingly done, and ‘of inestimable 
value in the advance of science. One day it 
was seen that the earth must be viewed not 
as by one standing upon the earth but as from 
the sun. It was shown that the relationship 
was one step more complex than men had 
supposed. Not one jot nor tittle had been 
removed from the established truth of former 
years. All had now to be seen in the light 


38 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of more extended relationships than had been 
previously dreamed. Such seems to be the 
ever-recurring history of the growth of knowl- 
edge. We may be on the verge of discarding 
the laborious and costly method of stringing 
wires across interminable miles for the better way 
of a perfectly wireless communication. It will 
not be because the old way was false but because 
it was based on partial knowledge, which finds 
itself fulfilled by advancing discovery. 


Reuicious Truta Supsect To DEVELOPMENT 


When we come into the region of religious 
truth, this was exactly the principle to which 
Jesus appealed to describe his relation to 
the Jewish law and the ancient order. He 
had not, he said, come to destroy the law, 
or the prophets, but only to fulfill them. On 
the strength of his consciousness of God and 
truth he set forth principles that rendered the 
old obsolete. A striking example was his 
interpretation of a phrase of the lex talionis, 
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” 
which did represent in one stage of civilization 
the principle of exact and impartial justice. 
Jesus fulfilled the law by showing that justice 
without sympathy is not wholly just, and so 
the men of the new order were to forgive. 

A new system of ethics must be written for 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 39 


every age. The principles remain the same, 
but the applications are either new or newly 
seen. The complexity of our modern civil- 
ization, with its means of communication, its 
wireless, its moving pictures, and its auto- 
mobiles, has added further temptations and 
compelled the new applications of old prin- 
ciples. It was significant in the teaching of 
Jesus that he was content to lay down the 
ethical principles which the growing mind and 
heart of man would apply in new ways. Cen- 
tury by century we make the developing 
application, doing away with slavery, the 
fraud of big business, the debaucheries of 
strong drink, and a hundred evils which did 
not appear as evils to another age. 


Vauipity oF TRUTH INTERNAL 


The necessity that truth shall be judged 
continuously by its reference to the needs 
of men, being re-proved or rediscovered by 
each generation, shows that the validity of 
truth rests upon internal rather than upon 
objective foundations. Perhaps the first ques- 
tion that would naturally arise at this point 
is the question of historic authority. How far 
does it extend? Is it valueless? Is it to be 
set lightly aside, or abrogated altogether? 

Let us inquire first how far historic authority 


40 THE REASON IN FAITH 


can go. It is evident that, in the first place, 
the historicity and the validity of authority 
is subject to the judgment of every individual 
who does not accept it unthinkingly. In any 
case it is not something which can be imposed 
against the individual judgment and will. As 
the chances for individual investigation are 
limited, there is danger that the authority 
will be accepted unquestioningly and so fail 
to enter into the life of the individual who 
accepts it. One, then, merely accepts the 
point of view in which he has been brought 
up, or which passes as conventional in the 
society which surrounds him. This is the 
case with the average man both regarding 
his knowledge and his religion. What are we 
to mean by historic revelation or inspiration? 
We sometimes speak of men as inspired 
by great ideas. We say that the missionary, 
in his wonderful grasp of the forces that are 
active in the Oriental world, and in his dream 
of its conquest for our Lord, is inspired by 
prophetic vision. Do we really mean it as true, 
or do we play with speech? We say of Charles 
Wesley that, in a moment of inspiration, he 
wrote “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” that im- 
mortal song of the heart worthy to take its 
place in the religious experience of thousands 
of Christians along with the Shepherd Psalm. 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 41 


But when we say that Charles Wesley was 
inspired to write that hymn, do we mean it? 
We say that the biblical writers were in- 
spired. Do we mean that they were so over- 
come by the Divine Spirit that they were able 
to speak or write only certain words that 
were dictated to them by the Almighty, losing 
for a time their own will power? Was their 
mental consciousness hypnotized? Were they 
for the moment so depersonalized that they 
could utter no word of themselves? Is this 
God’s usual way of revealing his will to men? 
To what extent did their inspiration go? Did 
it give unlettered men a knowledge of history 
they had never studied, or of astronomy which 
they had never investigated? Were they at the 
moment of inspiration lifted into omniscience? 
We must follow questions with further 
questionings. Is the day of inspiration past? 
It seems to have been active in a day of unde- 
veloped moral ideals. Is it operative to-day, 
and if not, why? Is it no longer needed? 
Has God lost the power or the will to inspire 
men or have they outgrown the need? Can 
the minds of uninspired men catch the deeper 
spiritual meanings of the inspired word? Is 
the sudden revelation of duty, or conviction 
for sin which comes to men out of words often 
read or heard before, which changes for right- 


42 THE REASON IN FAITH 


eousness the whole course of a life in any 
way connected with what we might call divine 
inspiration? Does inspiration as it came to 
King David of Judea differ in religious sig- 
nificance and worth from that which might 
come to a man of our own age? If so, what 
would the difference be? What is the modern 
significance of the Holy Spirit? What are 
the acid tests of inspiration which new ideas 
must undergo before they can be recognized? 
These questions indicate the necessity for 
explicit definition. 


MEANING oF REVELATION 


Revelation is the living God made known 
in history and experience. This was the con- 
ception that filled the minds of Israel’s poets, 
seers, and prophets: “My soul cries out for 
the living God.” It is exactly this conscious- 
ness that, breathing through their words, stirs 
across the long centuries the heart of the 
modern age. The living God is the demand 
of the human soul that outlasts all human 
prejudices, all tyrannies of human thought, 
growth in civilization, all time and change. 
The hunger for the living God is the basis 
of all revelation to the souls of men. The 
Bible is the story of how this revelation came 
to the pioneer minds of the world’s most 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 43 


religious race. The Bible is not that revela- 
tion, for that revelation could only partially 
and poorly be put into human speech and 
expression. But as the story of revelation 
to a great race it stands forever. No greater 
mistake can be made than to identify the book 
with revelation, and so to limit the meaning 
of the term, and so to confine God to a time, 
a season, and a people. If men are to be led 
aright, there must be a living God and a liv- 
ing guidance for this as for every other age. 
One other point needs always to be remem- 
bered, that revelation has always to be made 
to men as they are. It is the characteristic 
of God that he is willing to meet man on the 
plane of his present moral and _ intellectual 
crudeness, and to reveal so much of himself 
as he can get the undeveloped man to under- 
stand. God is willing to wait and still to 
wait for man to grow. We cannot compre- 
hend this attitude of God, because living under 
the forms of time and space we have to get 
our work done right soon and cannot wait. 
With him one day is as a thousand years, and 
a thousand years are as one day. He seems 
content out of the rolling centuries to bring 
man up to moral freedom and to make him 
a lover of the good and true and righteous. 


We should not, then, be surprised to find 


Ad THE REASON IN FAITH 


moral crudities, and half-understandings, and 
even misunderstandings, existing alongside of 
the highest and holiest conceptions of the divine 
will and nature, both in thé character of the 
men who caught the light of revelation and 
in the book that tells the story of their growth 
in the knowledge of God. We should not be, 
and in practice we are not, less sure of the 
spiritual truth of the:twenty-third psalm because 
we read elsewhere of the terrible transgression 
of its probable author. We do not reject the 
spiritual vision of Isaiah because his words 
are bound in the same volume with the im- 
precatory psalms. We must and do take into 
account the growing moral sense of man. 
God is leading men along to better things. 
He does not grow impatient with moral in- 
fancy so long as the heart of the infant is 
willing and obedient. He is revealing himself 
as rapidly as growing moral and _ spiritual 
sense can take in his truth. He works through 
human history, but all life is a revelation of 
himself. Most of all does the’ revelation 
come in Jesus Christ, who was also the living 
God, “The express image of the Father.”’ 


MEANING OF INSPIRATION 


Inspiration is the gift of understanding the 
revelation of God to the world or to the indi- 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 45 


vidual. The revelation has been ready since 
the world began, waiting for the inspired 
mind. Inspiration enables man to interpret 
the march of events, to understand the divine 
message, the significance of experience, and 
the relation of God to his world. 

Inspiration does not give to a man knowl- 
edge of history which he has not himself wit- 
nessed or learned. It does not endow him 
with a knowledge of geology, nor of astronomy, 
nor of chemistry. It does not aim to convey 
to his mind knowledge that can be gained 
in a natural way. For these things God has 
provided other means of which he is equally 
the author. He provides the ground of all 
our thought, and we are under obligation to 
think sincerely. The aim of inspiration is 
spiritual, the comprehension of spiritual truth 
or of the divine will. God ordains that other 
kinds of knowledge should come by the stern 
way of mental discipline. On this side the 
seer is therefore subject to the mental limita- 
tions of his times. Inspiration is that spiritual 
vision which enables him to lay hold upon 
events and to say “God is here’; “This is 
the moral imperative”; ““That is the way of 
duty.” The greatest demand that is made 
upon him is the open mind to understand and 
to do God’s will. The pure in heart see God. 


46 THE REASON IN FAITH 


A great deal of time and of nervous energy 
have been wasted to bring the creation stories 
of Genesis into unity with the latest geological 
discoveries. This time and strength might 
have been saved to the greater glory and 
progress of the Kingdom. Speaking geolog- 
ically and astronomically, the creation stories 
represent the geological and astronomical con- 
viction of the times in which they were written. 
The point of inspiration in the Genesis accounts 
of the creation has to do not with correct 
geology but with recognition of the spiritual 
truth that, however men might explain the 
beginning of things, the basal fact behind 
everything was and is “In the beginning God.” 

This discovery of the relation of God to 
his world and the call through the struggle 
out of chaos and night to the freedom of the 
new heaven and the new earth rather than 
any scientific knowledge was the great gift 
of the biblical writers to the human race. 
Their vision remains across the ages the high- 
est dream of the world. This is knowledge 
that could reach men only through inspiration. 
Furthermore, it is knowledge that cannot be 
effectively comprehended, that is, it cannot 
have vital meaning to a human life except 
the mind be inspired to receive it. “‘No man,” 
says Paul, “can say that Jesus is the Lord, 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 47 
but by the Holy Ghost.’! It is still the Holy 


Spirit which convicts of sin, of righteousness 
and of judgment to come. To the uninspired 
mind such language is without meaning. 


RELATION OF INSPIRATION TO 
INFALLIBILITY 


We must clear the situation further by 
taking up the question of infallibility in its 
relation to inspiration. This is a theological 
word which so far as I know is quite foreign 
to any part of the Bible. The Bible writers 
seem never to have dreamed of claiming it 
for their work. I feel very certain Paul would 
never have claimed it for the letters that he 
was writing to his Christian friends around 
the Mediterranean. The nearest exception is 
perhaps the book of Revelation which was 
not received by the church at large as a part 
of the Bible until very late. Infallibility is, 
however, a term to be reckoned with and 
much on the common tongue. Here, again, 
before employing or allowing the term we 
ought to ask ourselves just what we mean 
by it. We ought to recognize first perhaps 
that there is no living thing that can be said 
to be infallible excepting God himself. So 
long as a thing partakes of the human, is sub- 

11 Cor. 12. 3. 


48 THE REASON IN FAITH 


ject to human thought, or is the creation of 
the human mind, it has no final claim to 
infallibility. Even ancient good and truth 
are made uncouth by time. Though the very 
words of the Bible were one by one infallible, 
we should need then an infallible interpreta- 
tion of those words. No one, not even God 
himself can, under free will, insure that any 
given word of human language shall convey 
to every mind the same idea. Under infalli- 
bility there would be no chance for difference 
of opinion. An infallible interpretation is 
impossible without an infallible interpreter. 
The Roman Catholic alone has of us all car- 
ried this matter to its true and unavoidable 
conclusion. The Pope is to him that infallible 
interpreting mind. But such words have no 
place in a true Protestantism, nor, indeed, in 
any vital religious system. | 

- Upon strict examination any theory of infalli- 
bility will be found untenable. Inspiration 
does not render men infallible, nor does it 
remove the subject of inspiration from the 
court of reason. We are to try even the spirits 
to see if they be of God. There is in the Bible 
itself illustration of the misuse of this theory. 
In Jeremiah’s time the false prophets were 
bolstering up their pleasant prophecies of the 
safety of Jerusalem from the foreign oppressor 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 49 


by quoting literally the words of Isaiah which 
in other times and other conditions had de- 
clared that God would not allow her to become 
the inheritance of the heathen. It was a 
slavish repetition of Scripture, but as applied 
to Jeremiah’s day it was false. 

But some one says, “If the Bible is not 
infallible, how can we trust it at all?” This 
question is one of those specters of the mind 
by which a religious panic is produced. The 
question is theoretical rather than practical. 
IT can ask an exactly similar question concern- 
ing the sense of smell, sight, or hearing. I 
am often deceived in each one of these realms. 
I hear many things that are not so. My sight 
often deceives me. Nevertheless, I continue to 
get along fairly well. Life can go on, because, 
for all practical purposes, my senses give me 
correct reports of the world around. It is 
not necessary to my life that my senses should 
be infallible, that is, incapable of being de- 
ceived. And the same thing is true of my 
spiritual life. Infallibility is not necessary to 
the trustworthiness of my senses, neither is 
infallibility necessary to the trustworthiness of 
the Bible. I use my human judgment still as 
God wants me to do, and the light that falls 
from the face of Christ, and what it tells me 
holds me fast when the tides lift and the cables 


50 THE REASON IN FAITH 


strain. Amid the sweeping waves I know I 
am fast to the eternal Rock. I do not need 
either Pope or priest to tell me so, for in the 
midst of the storm there is a song in my heart, 
and my vision is able to discern a Form walk- 
ing on the water, whom mine eyes behold and 
not another. We believe that the Holy Scrip- 
tures are a sufficient guide to the kingdom of 
grace and glory. And with all our half-under- 
standings and faltering interpretations still 
they are. A wayfaring man though a fool 
need not err therein. 


Tue PRINCIPLES BY WHICH INSPIRATION 
Is TO BE TESTED 


If, then, we cannot find anything so ready- 
made that we can take it without thought 
or judgment, let us see if there may not be 
some principles by which we may judge of 
the inspiration of our own and of other men’s © 
thoughts and of messages purporting to be 
religious. There are two outstanding theories 
by which we are most often asked to judge 
of the Bible. The first of these is inclusion 
in the canon of Scripture, the second is the 
statement of a prophet, ‘““Thus saith the Lord.” 

Perhaps the best general test of inspiration 
is the common one of acceptance by the uni- 
versal church as canonical Scripture. But 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 51 


while this is good enough in a general way, 
it is not to be slavishly followed. Such a 
general conception rigidly adhered to leaves 
out too many significant factors. 


Tue Measure oF INSPIRATION 


One of these factors that needs considera- 
tion is the relative measure of inspiration. I 
presume no one would hold that if it came 
to a case of losing the Song of Songs or the 
thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the one 
would be as much of a loss as the other. Nor 
that Ecclesiastes is as valuable for spiritual 
helpfulness as the Sermon on the Mount. We 
might even go farther and say that if the 
Beatitudes are inspired, the hundred and 
forty-seventh psalm cannot be, because they 
are diametrically opposed in their teaching of 
the treatment of enemies. John Wesley in 
arranging a Psalter for the use of the Amer- 
ican or Methodist Episcopal Church, left out 
many of the psalms because, as he explained 
in the introduction, they are “unfit for the 
mouths of a Christian congregation.” 


IMPORTANCE ASSIGNED BY THE Past 


The second factor that needs to be con- 
sidered in this general or canonical test for 
inspired writings is the relative religious im- 


52 THE REASON IN FAITH 


portance assigned to different books by earlier 
generations of men. All these books existed 
first as a body of literature. A few, the first 
five books, were accepted by the Jews at a 
comparatively late date in their history as the 
most sacred books. Later the greater and 
lesser prophets were added, as sacred books, 
not including Daniel. Still later the other 
books were added to the list as_ religious 
writings. Of these last the Song of Songs, 
Ecclesiastes, and Daniel were longest denied 
a place. To this day certain books are not 
allowed read in any Jewish synagogue at 
public worship. These are Chronicles, Job, 
Proverbs, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. 

The canon of the New Testament was not 
settled until the end of the fourth century 
alter Christ. That is, the church for nearly 
four hundred years after Christ had not deemed 
it necessary to pronounce on the matter of 
canonicity. Up to this time there had been 
but partial unity. The book of Revelation 
was very late in being received, and so also 
Jude and Epistle of James. These were chosen 
from a great mass of other books, some of 
the rejected books being held in high esteem 
as sacred by some of the churches who were 
outvoted in the Council. At the end of the 
third century the generally recognized books 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 53 


were four Gospels, thirteen Epistles of Paul 
(but not Hebrews), First Peter, and First 
John. To-day our Bible does not agree with 
the accepted Roman Catholic Bible because 
we hold as sacred the books generally received 
by the Palestinian Jews, while they accept 
those in favor with the Alexandrian Jews who 
translated the Septuagint. We see, then, 
that human judgment was compelled to choose 
what books or portions of books should be 
accepted as inspired, and any question settled 
by human judgment can honorably be opened 
to human judgment again. There is nothing 
that goes to prove that the judgment of the 
Council of Nice which voted on the matter 
in 397 A. D. and was then divided in its 
opinion, or the Jewish Council of Jamnia held 
in 1 A. D., possessed a mental infallibility 
which forever after is not subject to review 
by devout and intelligent men. It would be 
as just to claim that a session of a modern 
General Conference or General Assembly was 
infallible and its acts forever beyond criticism 
or change. 

We cannot, then, as we have so often thought, 
dismiss the need for individual and critical 
judgment. The principle of canonicity 1s 
valid only in a general way, as a valuable 
consensus of opinion in the Christian Church. 


54 THE REASON IN FAITH 


Tue Test oF tHE AUTHOR’S CLAIM 


There is still another principle of judgment 
by which it is possible to go concerning a por- 
tion of the sacred books. Many of the prophets 
use the phrase “Thus saith the Lord,” and 
other writers seem certain that what they 
write is the oracle of God. At first glance 
this would seem a secure resting place on the 
waters over which we have sent forth our 
dove of faith. It is necessary, however, to 
cite only an instance or two to show that 
even in this field we need to use individual 
powers of discretion. 

If you will turn to Jeremiah 38. 14-28, you 
will find him telling Zedekiah with a “Thus 
saith the Lord” that if he will go out and 
fight the approaching Babylonians, the city — 
and its people will be saved. This resistance 
which Jeremiah recommended, Zedekiah did 
make. As the result he was defeated, his two 
sons were killed before his eyes, and, that 
the horrible vision might be the last he should 
ever look upon, his own eyes were then put 
out. ‘There is but one inference open to a 
mind not inalienably bent on apology. That 
inference is that in this case Jeremiah was 
sure of the Divine Will regarding Zedekiah, 
but was mistaken. But perhaps this is not 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 55 


sufficiently convincing to some. Here is an- 
other example: Ezekiel with a “Thus saith the 
Lord” promised the fall of Tyre under the 
blows of Nebuchadrezzar. But, contrary to 
his expectation, Tyre withstood the “siege.” 
Here again either Ezekiel was mistaken in the 
word of the Lord, or God did not keep his 
word. 

The only thing that this proves is the fact 
that even with the most inspired of prophets 
it was possible for them to be mistaken regard- 
ing the events around them, and especially 
when they left the field of spiritual interests 
and began to deal with political matters. At 
any rate, we see that we cannot, without the 
exercise of individual knowledge and judg- 
ment, unquestioningly receive the conviction of 
the writer himself. In fact, we should find 
by examination of the Apocryphal books that 
the least trustworthy authors attempted to 
get their writings received by themselves, ad- 
vancing the boldest claims to divine authority. 


Tue FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES STATED IN 
THE BrisiE ITsELF 
One should not attempt from himself to 
‘name the principles of choice upon which the 
individual must act in judging of inspiration. 
2 Compare Ezek. 26. 7ff. with 29. 17. 


56 THE REASON IN FAITH 


Very happily these principles are named within 
the Bible itself, and one does not need to go 
outside of the Book to prove the position 
taken. Both the prophets and Jesus have 
laid down the principles for us, and_ their 
having done so confirms inalienably our own 
right of judgment. 

Neither Jesus nor the prophets had a canon 
as we at present think of it. They were com- 
pelled to judge by certain moral and spiritual 
considerations, and these they have named 
for our guidance. As true prophets they 
wished their own work to be judged by these 
rather than by any artificial standards. 

Isaiah judged himself inspired by reason of 
an inner illumination that came to him while 
at worship in the Temple. 

The consciousness of inspiration came to 
Ezekiel from the reading of a book. 

Upon Jeremiah fell the consciousness of a 
call to a great work. 

Amos was led to the eternal sureties by the 
passage of national events, the existence of 
great national sins, and the indwelling in his 
own heart of the moral imperative. In the 
face of national demoralization and moral 
decay, with wickedness coming in as a flood, 
and the consciousness that God was still in 
heaven “who could but prophesy?” he asks. 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 57 


It was as if, holding his peace, the very stones 
would cry out for judgment. 

Deuteronomy? declares the norm of judgment 
is this: no matter what the accompanying 
signs and wonders may be, any prophecy is 
false if it leads away from righteousness of 
conduct, the following of the true God. 

Jeremiah! says that the best proof of the 
truth of a prophet’s word is the test of events. 
Is he inspired in that which he utters? See 
if his prophecy comes to pass. 


‘Tue Princrptes Lain Down By JESUS 


Jesus laid down three principles of judg- 
ment to which all words claiming inspiration 
were to be put to the acid test. The first 
was the test of results. Does your prophet 
and his prophecy help the world to God? 
“By their fruits ye shall know them.” They 
are to be subjected to the same unbiased 
judgment by which you decide that a thistle 
is not a fig. 

The second principle of judgment was the 
character of the prophet himself. This was 
the test he asked the multitude to apply to 
his own words. Am I a good man or am I 


pid ly Eas 
428. 9. 


58 THE REASON IN FAITH 


a deceiver? If he were a really good man, 
his words must agree with his character. 

The third principle was the internal. con- 
sciousness of the prophet himself. If the man 
at great sacrifice spoke the word that he 
felt was from God, and the character of the 
man was such as to give credence to his word 
as a divine message, and the result of the 
prophet and his message was to lead men 
away from sin to righteousness, then there 
was evidence of inspiration. In the final inter- 
views with his disciples Jesus brought these 
principles down to modern times, making them 
practical in all ages by sending the Holy Spirit, 
whose function was “to guide men into all 
truth.” | | 

To my mind, at least, Jesus left nothing to 
be added. He would not have laid down these 
principles had he not expected his disciples to 
use them. 


RELATION OF THESE REFLECTIONS TO 
Mopiern PROBLEMS 


Let us in conclusion go back to the state- 
ments with which we began. Revelation is 
the living God at work in history and expe- 
rience. The apprehension of his presence and 
his will comes to man through inspiration. 
In the presence of the Eternal God, in whom 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 59 


he lives and moves and has his being, the 
dull mind of man now and again catches step 
with that eternal purpose and eternal will. 


PRESENT UNDERSTANDING 


We cannot rule all revelation and all inspira- 
tion into the past without ruling God out of 
his present world and the understanding of 
his will out of the present generation. We 
may—indeed, we must—hold to the sufficient 
revelation in Jesus Christ, but we must also 
hold that the passing years are adding clear- 
ness to the human conception of his teaching. 
The passage of time only enhances the beauty 
and truth of his word. 

Revelation and inspiration in order to be 
effective must be living fires, burning from 
generation to generation. We shall find that 
this view agrees with that of Jesus, who talked 
to his disciples of enlarging conceptions of 
truth under the safe leadership of the Holy 
Spirit. 

PRESENT CLAIMS 


How does such a theory prevent the sub- 
stitution of Mormonism, Dowieism, Mary- 
Baker-Eddyism, and all the foul brood of 
error that would divert men from the heart 
of the gospel, which is righteous and Christ- 


60 THE REASON IN FAITH 


like living? Let us apply the test that Jesus 
set for his disciples, ancient and modern. 

As to the fruits of the teaching: Does it 
go unselfishly into all the world, bearing a 
cross, not to propagate a system but to minister 
to the sinful, broken-hearted, and poor, or 
does it have the taint of the dollar or of self- 
interest over all its pious palaver? “By their 
fruits ye shall know them.” What is the 
character of the purveyor of the alleged spir- 
itual discovery? Is it sordidness, greed, and 
sinP What one of the spiritual impostors of 
our generation or before could stand this acid 
test? Not one. Last of all, do these truths 
ring in men’s hearts with a commanding moral 
imperative so that one against his will is forced 
to feel that if he follow not, his soul is lost? 
We can safely admit, I think, the things that 
can pass this test. 


THe Purpose oF INSPIRATION IS LIFE 


The judgment of the true is an inalienable 
moral right of the individual, and it cannot 
be taken away by any man or group of men 
without entailing spiritual loss. The object of 
inspiration is not to lend an infallible hearing 
of the ear, but to bring individual men into 
close and enduring experience of God. It is 
not enough that I should be able to read about 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 61 


him, though the story be ever so skillfully or 
infallibly told. The heart of inspiration is 
that I should know God in my own heart. 
The scaffold by which I build that house of 
eternal life—how precious is it beyond all 
words and expression! But the scaffolding is 
to be taken down some day and I shall know 
him no longer by hearsay, but as he is. To 
know him is eternal life. To come to this goal 
it may be necessary to venture forth on stormy 
and troubled seas, but God is the pilot and 
I shall be brought into the desired haven. 


Tue Puace oF Historic AUTHORITY 


Are we to consider historic authority value- 
_ less because it does not remove the necessity 
for private judgment? Not at all. Historic 
authority bears all the validity of its. true- 
ness and no more. If it is false, no authority 
ean make it true and no legislation can erect 
it into verity. If its authors show evidence 
of a supreme ethical knowledge, and the value 
and validity of that knowledge are proved in 
passing generations of men; if it meets the 
pragmatic needs of man’s individual and social 
life, it must be assumed as truth. No one 
person is justified in breaking with the past. 
He is surely foolish who vainly imagines that 
he is in touch with such sources of wisdom, 


62 THE REASON IN FAITH 


or is so independent of the past, that he can 
jump forth full-fledged to utter his own inde- 
pendent and conflicting discoveries. We have 
such men now and then who strut across our 
range of vision, but both God and _ history 
laugh at their futility. We are the children 
of time and we cannot discard the past with- 
out doing violence to our own intelligence. 
Unfolding truths, discovery of new relations, 
we have a right to expect as the rich reward 
of life, but one of the surest touchstones to 
present truth is, that it is but the fulfillment 
of the best wisdom of yesterday and of the 
ages which lie behind. 


ULTIMATE AUTHORITY THE LIGHT THAT 
LicutetaH Every Man 


Is there no seat of ultimate judgment or 
authority beyond man himself? This is the 
perilous question to which we will eventually 
be driven. It seems to many honest souls a 
dangerous affair to leave truth to individual 
judgment; but this is exactly what God did, 
and he was apparently willing to take the 
risk. It may be all wrong, and we may not 
be able to have so much faith in humanity as 
God does. Nevertheless, it is quite probable 
there may be method in what seems to some 
a divine madness. There is a certain moral 


SELF-JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH 63 


and spiritual development to be found in 
making our own ethical decisions and in dis- 
covering the truth for ourselves. Such is the 
greatness of the divine mercy that we are 
granted the privileges of moral choices in 
which we may go wrong. The margin of 
ethical uncertainty is not so broad as one 
might suppose. There are certain fundamental 
moralities which every man recognizes whether 
or not he accepts them. When he has the 
touchstone of an actual life like that of the 
Man of Nazareth, he recognizes at once that 
such is the kind of a man he ought to be. We 
can be of many minds concerning the casuistic 
morals of the Pharisees, but on the funda- 
mentals we agree. Face to face with moral 
goodness the heart speaks louder than cus- 
tom, habit, savagery, or civilization. There 
can be no doubt by anyone that the highest 
command upon us is to love God with all our 
hearts and our neighbor as ourself. The only 
reason that command does not capture the 
world is because it is so difficult to achieve 
and we do but half-heartedly obey it. 


CHAPTER III 
THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 


THe MEANING OF EXISTENCE SOLUBLE IN 
Practice ONLY 


Tur meaning of existence is the unsolved 
problem of humanity. At the same time it 
is the problem which the mind of man cannot 
leave alone. Like the riddle of the Sphinx 
we must measurably find the answer for our- 
selves or be devoured. While it would be 
presumptuous for any man to declare the 
solution, yet some of the proposed solutions 
quarrel less violently with the whole circle 
of facts than others. Some are illogical and 
some negate the deeper values, some break 
down in absolute denial of the possibility of 
knowledge. Obviously, we cannot expect much 
from an explanation which merely assumes 
that explanation is impossible. We seem 
bound in mental integrity to follow that way 
which holds to an open mind and which does 


not close the avenues of investigation. 
64 


THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 65 


Two CiassEes oF EXPLANATION—PERSONAL 
AND IMPERSONAL 


There are two general classes of explanation 
—personal and impersonal. Of the impersonal 
type there are a number of modern varieties. 


IMPERSONAL 


. Materialistic mechanism is the type of 
impersonalistic explanation which makes the 
greatest claims for being scientific. It assumes 
that the basis of all activity is in material 
energy. To.it even the activity of thought 
can be traced to external impulses. It has 
never been able to prove the exact measure- 
tment of these impulses, but because there is 
a correspondence it assumes that “it will some 
day be able” to show that a mental activity 
exists by reason of and in exact physical 
measure of external impulse, and as the result 
of that impulse. Thus it is led to the denial 
of human freedom. But this is not the most 
disastrous outcome of such thinking. Thought 
is recognized as something less real than ob- 
jects. Qualities are tainted with the inter- 
pretations that arise from mental action. 
Qualities are themselves immaterial or only 
the effects upon mind of activity in an atomic 
substance. Reality, then, is the material base 
that sends out qualities. If this, then, be 


66 THE REASON IN FAITH 


true, we get only qualities, but can never know 
reality at all. Thus by the short route of 
so-called scientific thinking we land in logical 
denial of the possibility of knowledge. Some 
day it will be discovered that this skepticism, 
far from being scientific, is the enemy of 
scientific discovery and investigation. 

Another type of impersonal explanation is 
represented in the modern reversion to Aris- 
totelianism, in the use of the term “entelechy,” 
or function. Here we have an active universe 
because it is the function of the universe to 
act. The assumption is that a certain ma- 
terial combination by reason of its relation 
produces the various marvelous adaptations of 
nature. So the lily is three-parted because 
such is the function of lilies, or flowers cross- 
fertilize because it is their function. It is at 
once obvious to any careful thinker that this 
type of explanation is purely verbal. If we 
must take it and despair of anything better, 
we are driven to sorry lengths. It is but a> 
house of cards which any precocious infant 
can upset by asking “Why?” Surely, we 
cannot produce satisfactory explanation by 
begging the question. The tautology of func- 
tionalism does not satisfy the mind. 

Still another form of explanation quite com- 
mon is that of primal accident as the cause of 


THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE = 67 


present life and order. It is assumed that 
matter and motion are all that are required 
to produce anything. 


Prat AccipeENntT oF Mattrer anp Motion 


“Given time, energy, and matter, and all 
is possible. At first these compounds are 
simple, but simple joins to simple and makes 
eomplex. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen 
unite to make amino solids, which condense 
in the seas. They accumulate there, for there 
is nothing to remove or destroy them—no 
bacteria, no molds. They interact also. Slowly 
they condense to form every kind of complex 
compound: proteins appear, phosphoric acid 
compounds, fats, sugars; and at last, as a 
result of these complex molecules, emulsions 
are formed. A slime appears in the pools. 
It passes, reappears, dissolves, reappears, liv- 
ing always a longer time. A countless num- 
ber of times this happens until a moving 
equilibrium is finally established. The slime 
persists and increases. It attracts to itself 
pieces like it in composition. What has hap- 
pened? It is the process of individuation 
which has taken a long step forward. The 
universe is dividing into two parts—an indi- 
vidual, a slime, and all else. This is a living slime. 

“At what moment did life appear? At no 


68 THE REASON IN FAITH 


moment. One cannot say, because it was 
there from the beginning. From the elemental 
carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, the progress upward 
of heterogeneity has been so gradual that one 
cannot say that at this moment life appeared; 
it has been a becoming for so long. But this 
slime is alive by all our criteria. It moves, 
feebly, but it moves; it grows, slowly, to be 
sure, but still it grows. It holds its life by a 
thread; it can equilibrate itself only with a 
very small change and to a very slowly chang- 
ing environment. The slightest rise in tem- 
perature dissolves it. Look at it carefully. 
What is there in that colloidal foam, colorless 
and microscopic in size, and almost homoge- 
neous, without visible differentiation of struc- 
ture? Everything is in it: every plant, every 
animal, you and I.” . 

This constitutes one of the best illustrations 
of the fallacy of explanation by attempted 
description. It seems preposterous that any — 
thinking being should take seriously this out- 
burst of words, but imagination is a truly 
wonderful gift for deception 

The back-lying assumption here is that by 
the law of permutations and combinations any 
possible effect must be hit upon “if it has 
time enough.” The logical fallacy is so obvious 
and so ancient that one feels reluctant to 


THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE — 69 


waste time upon it. Only failure to bring it 
into touch with actual conditions prolongs its 
life. Would it be safe to say that if you had 
all the characters which appear in your morn- 
ing paper in constant movement eventually 
they would of necessity take that position 
of mutual relations which comprises the intel- 
ligible sheet I have before me? One sees 
with the actual problem before him that there 
would never be years enough to imsure that 
combination and if it should happen, it would 
be more of a miracle than the hardiest theist 
would think of claiming. It is safe to say 
that if such explanation were offered in any 
other realm than that of science, it would be 
- immediately rejected by science as gross super- 
stition. The legend of the Septuagint Scrip- 
tures in which the seventy isolated scholars 
were directly inspired of God to write the 
Scriptures in a month, and in which without 
consultation each wrote identical words, would 
be reasonable and scientific as compared with 
the accident explanation of the universe. 


Tue PANTHEISTIC CONCLUSIONS OF 
ABSOLUTISM 


One other type of impersonal explanation 
should perhaps have a word, that is, idealistic 
absolutism. This type is clearly forced to a 


70 THE REASON IN FAITH 


pantheistic conception of the world of which 
matter and personal mentalities as well are but 
the emanation. Much poetic effusion is wasted 
in declaring that God is all. A little clear 
thinking would show that God, then, becomes 
responsible for all the blindness, wickedness, 
prejudice, and error, including even the 
resistance to the “God is all’ doctrine. In 
this case God is his own worst enemy and 
needs himself to take the cure his votaries — 
would give to others. | 


AuL ImpeRsonAListic Forms Commit To 
THE INFINITE REGRESS 


It becomes increasingly clear that all imper- 
sonalistic forms of cosmic explanation commit 
to the infinite regress and eventually denial 
of all knowledge of reality, or as functionalism 
provide only a tautology of verbal solution, or 
as accidentalism make war on reason itself, 
requiring unreasonable miracle or, as in the 
case of absolutism, disclose a world-ground at 
war with itself, one part of it negating the 
other part. This survey of impersonalistic ex- 
planation is fairly inclusive of the various types. 


PERSONALISTIC EXPLANATION 


Now, of cosmic explanation there seem to be 
but two general types—impersonalistic and 


THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 71 


personalistic. The personalistic type assumes 
that it is reasonable to hold the origin of an 
intelligible world is in a basic intelligence, on 
the scientific principle that a cause must be 
adequate for its effects. It assumes also that 
this basal cause is active and that it has power 
to direct its action. In other words, personal- 
ism assumes that the ground of existence is 
self-conscious and self-directive. The posses- 
sion of these two elements is what it means 
by personality. They do not necessitate bodily 
form. In connection with the further dis- 
cussion three leading questions arise: 

Is existence creative or static? Is existence 
related to the temporal and spatial order 
under the form of life? Are there reasons 
for assigning intelligence to cosmic existence? 
The discussion of these questions should clarify 
our position and show the tenability of the 
personalistic explanation. 


Is Existence CREATIVE OR STATIC? 


It may be doubted at first whether one or 
the other horn of this dilemma is made neces- 
sary. But it has been thus put by generations 
of human thinkers and so may serve the pur- 
poses of this discussion. The Eleatic contention 
that there is no movement would at the present 


72 THE REASON IN FAITH 


find few defenders. But there are those who 
contend that what we call change is but the 
movement of certain units which are con- 
ceived as every whit alike, bearing exactly 
the same properties and grounding what we 
call quality by increasing the quantity. It 
is assumed as a corollary of this that quality 
is always reducible to terms of quantity. It 
will be seen that this view is really a refine- 
ment of the earlier notion. In the former 
view we had a static cosmos; in the latter we 
have a static unit of reality called by various 
names, such as atom, zon, electron, or vortex. 
Inasmuch as there would at present be no 
point in discussing ancient Eleaticism, let us 
turn our attention to the notion of a static 
atom which makes up the universe: 


Quauity 1s Mave an Intusion 


There is no doubt that the world has grown 
ages away from the Eleatics, who contended 
that being is static, that motion is impossible, 
and that change is illusion. Even the most 
confirmed of mechanists insists that motion 
is necessary. He may hold to the Eleatic idea 
in maintaining a monistic unit of reality; he 
may contend that qualities are but the expres- 
sion of atomic quantities; but life means to 





THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE = 73 


him at least motion of the fundamental unit. 
In this he is not so consistent as the Eleatics. 
They denied change altogether, he affirms it 
without producing intelligible reason. 

Suppose we proceed on the basis of a uni- 
versal vibratory theory to affirm one ultimate 
basic unit called by whatever name pleases 
_us, and assume that all sense qualities come to 
us through the speed, wave length, or what- 
not in the motion of this basal unit. Is motion 
adequate to account for our various qualitative 
interpretations? 

Suppose all we know is held reducible to 
vibrations of cosmic unchangeable units, so 
that sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are 
but these measurable vibrations. The fact 
remains that we are not conscious of vibrations 
at all, but of quality. The quantitative asser- 
tion can do no more than establish a relation 
between quantity and that which we discern 
as quality. Measurement cannot answer our 
question of what is quality, or why vibrations 
produce in us the effect they do instead of 
producing consciousness of vibrations which 
they really are. 

A similar question might be put to him who 
asserts that motion is the reality of cosmic 
change. Why are we not conscious of this 
change for what it is, namely, a movement 


74 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of atoms from one place to another? On the 
contrary, the cosmic changes seem to produce 
in some both a sweetness and light which are 
other than motion. 

So has it come about that mechanism is 
being forced to a view that the world is less 
lumpish matter and more and more activity. 
Can our notion of the atom remain that of a 
static unit in rapid motion? If so, change is 
nothing more than a redistribution of energy. 
If this is the case, our atom is like the brick 
that makes up a heap or a portion of wall, 
and we are forced to assume that by adding 
to the number or position we can change the 
quality of the whole heap. Quality becomes, 
then, only a mental illusion and there can be 
nothing really new or unique. In the end we 
are forced by our static unit of matter to as 
rigid a state of changelessness as that which 


held the Eleatics.. 


Ir EXISTENCE IS CREATIVE 


The alternative of a static universe is a 
creative or contingent world which is quite 
commonly assumed by all classes of thinkers 
to-day. Here, again, we are faced with a 
choice of positions. If life is a contingent and 
creative process, adapting itself to new cir- 





THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 75 


cumstances in such ways as to meet changes 
demanded for self-preservation and progress, 
where does this intelligent adaptability home 
itself? Is it in the cell or in something behind 
the cell? Activity is meaningless unless it is 
directed. If there is to be evolution in ever- 
ascending order, there must be forethought 
somewhere. We can scarcely lay to natural 
‘selection adaptations which are made before 
selection is possible. Whence came the first 
adaptation or the beginning of adaptation? 
There is no reason why rapid motion should 
eventuate in universal cosmos rather than in 
universal chaos. If we should actually witness 
chaos marshaling itself bit by bit into a formu- 
lated order, we should demand to know the 
intelligent source. If a mob suddenly breaks 
up into platoons, wheeling right and left im 
perfect step in such a way as to escape a burn- 
ing building, even the craziest of us would not 
dream of ascribing that adaptation either to 
accident or the law of survival. We would 
ask after the intelligence that must have 
directed the whole maneuver. Moreover, we 
should not be considered less scientific in 
assuming the existence of a drillmaster, or more 
scientific in claiming that the strange result 
was most reasonably explained on the basis 
of accident. 


76 THE REASON IN FAITH 


It Must Br ConsIDERED AS INTELLIGENCE 
RESIDING IN THE CELL 


What the scientist, the man of the street, 
and the philosopher alike are demanding at 
this point is not merely activity; it is creativ- 
ity, and creativity demands both intelligence 
and freedom. Here we can choose to say that 
intelligence and freedom are in each individual 
cell or that they very likely reside in an energy 
or force or personality which maintains and 
upholds the whole system of cosmic relations. 
If we maintain this creative direction is in the 
cell itself, we must assume each cell to possess 
a knowledge of all other cells and of its rela- 
tions to them both individually and as a whole. 
Its knowledge must possess a cosmic sweep 
which would be the despair of any human 
mind, for it would have to know, not only 
everything that has been or does now exist, 
but everything that could be. The material- 
istic scientist is logically compelled to an 
assumption of knowledge in every living cell 
which he denies to a Supreme Being. The 
question immediately forces itself upon us, 
why, with a body composed of all-knowing 
cells, the human mind should know so little 
about its relations with the world around it 
and why its knowledge should be gained at so 


ae —— 





THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 177 


tremendous an effort. We should really be 
teeming with knowledge. Mund would seem to 
be the only thing to stand in the way of knowl- 
edge, and one might well be conceived as 
praying for a return to cellular simplicity and 
a Bergsonian intuition. Such a course not 
only succeeds in vacating the reality of a 
Supreme Mind, at which some of our friends 
rejoice, not comprehending that by the same 
stroke they make it logically impossible to 
maintain the existence and reality of their 
own minds. Like the work of the fabled 
scimiter, they have cut off their own heads 
with a blade so sharp they do not realize what 
has happened until they attempt to nod. The 
overthrow of theism is attended with all the 
danger of a Parthian retreat. It is fatal to 
the pursuers. 


Or as SUPREME INTELLIGENCE TRANSCENDING 
: THE PROCESS 


There is remaining, then, one other assump- 
tion concerning this active and creative world, 
which is that it is responding to a supreme 
intelligence which is able to weave all into an 
orderly whole and which has been able to 
endow its own creatures with a contingency 
which makes possible freedom in action in 
constantly ascending scale. Some assumption 


78 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of this kind is clearly necessary if we are to 
hold that existence is creative and biological 
evolution is possible. 

The two remaining questions have in effect 
been already answered, so that it is only 
necessary to draw out a particular phase of 
the one and to do little more than answer the 
other. | 

Is existence a relation to the temporal and 
spatial under the form of life? The Eleatics 
removed the ground of change by removing 
the relations to the temporal and spatial order. 
Zeno refused to consider the relation of the 
arrow to more than one point in space at a 
given time. The attempt to analyze the spatial 
and temporal relations into different com- 
partments of experience has always even- 
tuated in some such deadlock. The element 
that puts grotesqueness into our dreaming is 
the fact that temporal and spatial are thrown 
out of alignment by absence of the usual norms 
of relation. It may be that much of our 
scientific hypothesis regarding the nature of 
life, as when we speak of light as vibrations in 
cosmic ether, thus putting it under a spatial 
and temporal form, suffers from the assump- 
tion of a relation which we do not really know. 
We are sure to suffer from such faulty assump- 
tions so long as we consider space and time 


THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 79 


independent realities rather than the form of 
relation between objects and events. There is 
no doubt that the impetus which Einstein and 
many others have given to this phase of physics 
will lead to new and valuable discoveries. 

In order to have change at all there must 
be something which survives change and is in 
a sense changeless. The separate drops of a 
‘flowing river, bearing ever the same relative 
position and conscious only of the surrounding 
drops, would in no wise be conscious of flow. 
It is the spectator on the bank, who is able to 
take in the changing relations, to whom the 
change becomes a reality. It is just the time- 
less and spaceless element in the human mind 
which makes possible the conception of time 
and space. It is probable that that which we 
eall living being is differentiated from the non- 
livmg by just this power to conquer the tem- 
poral and spatial elements and make them a 
part of experience. This in the end will amount 
to a power to realize relations. Ultimately it 
may be found that the energy, force, or intel- 
ligence which is able to ground and to realize 
all relations would be both spaceless and time- 
less, and what the theist names as God. 

Are there reasons for assigning intelligence 
to existence? Only that can be conscious of 
space and time which is conscious of itself as 


80 THE REASON IN FAITH 


over against passing events, differentiated from 
surrounding objects. If the supreme being, 
then, is to be a world-ground, developing living 
things in orderly evolution, it must possess the 
quality of space and time experience. The 
power of self-consciousness with the power of 
self-direction is, however, the very essence of 
personality. If the world-ground is to act 
through time, it must be personal, and this is 
what one might reasonably expect in an intel- 
ligible universe. Not only is the assumption 
of theism logically necessary to any consistent 
doctrine of evolution, there are certain other 
personal qualities essential in the world-ground 
if proper standing is to be accorded the moral 
values. The world-ground must be living. 
That is, it must be the subject of experience. 
If God is undertaking a creation under the 


spatial and temporal form, it will appear that 


he moves toward a goal of development. He 
becomes vitally interested in this consummation, 
and inasmuch as the coming of other free wills 
has introduced the element of contingency, man 
can be a coworker with God in securing the 
moral evolution sought. Inasmuch as the 
moral victories of man become a part of the 
divine experience, man’s moral well-being be- 
comes of the utmost moment to God. More- 
over, such an assumption puts the universe in 


OE —s 


THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE 81 


league with right-thinking and _ right-acting 
men, giving the hope that when men every- 
where have brought themselves into harmony 
with God they will find themselves likewise 
in harmony with the universe. Nature will at 
last be found the ally of righteousness. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE REASONABLENESS OF THE 
INCARNATION 


TueE earlier method of textual proofs of the 
Incarnation was bound to lose ground with 
the passing of the hold upon men’s minds of 
the doctrine of strict verbal infallibility. What- 
ever one may believe with regard to verbal 
infallibility, there is obviously little use of 
attempting to increase belief in the incarnation 
by methods which themselves for either good 
or bad reasons are no longer convincing to 
many. It is important that the question of 
the incarnation should be approached from the 
angle of admitted facts. It surely does not 
show a wholesome belief to refuse this approach, 
for, if one really believes in the incarnation, 
he must equally believe it is not in contradiction 
of any scientific truths of which we are pos- 
sessed. To submit a fundamental truth like 
the incarnation to the extreme tests of logic, 
science, and life is, if it be true, likely to make 
it appear even more reasonable, than if held 
with unquestioning faith. 


It is important, then, for modern belief 
82 


é : 


THE INCARNATION 83 


that we should discover what facts are known 
by experience and correlated by philosophy 
having a bearing upon the question. In the 
last analysis we will not, of course, make claim 
to scientific demonstration. Few people in 
these days realize how exceedingly limited is 
the field of scientific proof. Beyond the facts 
relating to our physical wants there is no 
place for scientific demonstration. 

The practical and living values are taken 
upon faith and general reasonableness, rather 
than upon demonstration, from the transac- 
tions of business life, resting on belief in general 
integrity, to accepting the love of one’s mother 
as an undemonstrable but working fact of life. 
While one does not wish in any way to dis- 
parage scientific proof, it is clearly seen to 
operate less and less the higher the range of 
human values considered. 

Is the incarnation a reasonable supposition? 
Is it in keeping with what we know of the 
higher human values? Is it of any importance 
to the welfare of the race whether or not it 
be assumed as true? Would anything be lost 
by failure to accept it? We believe the assump- 
tion of the incarnation of God in Christ is of 
the most stupendous moment to human progress 
and attainment and that it is in the com- 
pletest sense reasonable and necessary. 


84 THE REASON IN FAITH 


We shall consider it first in the light of 
Jesus’ own assumptions and shall then attempt 
to show its reasonableness from several im- 
portant standpoints. | 


Jesus’ THouGut OF THE INCARNATION GREW 
Out or His CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE 
DivinE FATHERHOOD 


Jesus’ thought of incarnation grew out of 
his interpretation of divine Fatherhood and 
was evidenced by the Holy Spirit. The divine 
Fatherhood was the unique representation of 
Jesus. Between the prophetic conception of 
the divine Fatherhood and that of Jesus there 
was a continental difference. It was Jesus 
who brought to the vague and narrow dream 
of the ancient prophets a real content and 
made it a fact for humanity. 

The Jews were not unfamiliar with the 
thought of divine Fatherhood, but it was a 
fatherhood with many limitations. It was of 
God as the Father of Israel, the nation. All 
other nations and peoples were, in the common 
thought at least, shut out of that relationship. 
Moreover, they thought of God as the Father 
of the nation rather than as the Father of the 
individual. The nation was the supreme care, 
while individuals went down in the stream of 
events uncared for and forgotten. Conse- 


THE INCARNATION 85 


quently, when Jesus said ““My Father,” “Our 
Father,” it appealed to the theological minds 
among his hearers as a blasphemy. 

Not only was Jesus’ doctrine of the divine 
Fatherhood unique; it was the consummation 
of all his teachings concerning God. Modern 
theology describes God under a long category 
of. attributes. Calling attention to his omnis- 
cience, his omnipotence, his omnipresence, his 
immutability, his incomprehensibility, it names 
him as Judge, Creator, Avenger. Jesus had 
but one term which he used almost exclusively 
to describe God; that was ‘“‘Father.” And 
yet through the long Christian centuries we 
have been afraid to accept the implication of 
Fatherhood as being religiously safe and sound. 
We are yet afraid to trust the love of God to 
do what his vengeance could never accom- 
plish, just as we are afraid to trust ourselves 
without reserve to the principles of the Sermon 
on the Mount. 

Let us, then, attempt briefly to look into 
Jesus’ teaching of the divine Fatherhood. This 
teaching can best be determined in three ways: 
first, by the words of Jesus bearing directly 
on the subject; second, by his conception of 
the meaning of Messiahship; third, by his 
teaching respecting the office and work of the 
Holy Spirit. 


86 THE REASON IN FAITH 


Direct Worps or Jesus ON THE DIVINE 
FATHERHOOD 


Much stress has been laid on the significant 
choice of a lesson which Jesus read at the 
Synagogue in Nazareth, in the beginning of 
his ministry. But no less significant in that 
lesson is what he failed to read. “The Spirit 
of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; 
he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at 
liberty them that are bruised, to preach the 
acceptable year of the Lord.” Then, as the 
minds of his hearers went on to the following 
clause, “The day of vengeance of our God,” 
he abruptly closed the book and returned it. 
This was in strict keeping with the word 
already spoken to Nicodemus, “God sent not 
his Son into the world to condemn the world; 
but that the world through him might be 
saved.””? 

But what Jesus thought of the Fatherhood 
of love was not that men might safely pre- 
sume upon it, as is so often the idea of men 
who have said most about it. It is, rather, the 
foundation of ethics and of religious action for 


1 John 3. 17. 


THE INCARNATION 87 


all who desire to be the children of the highest. 
Turn, now, to the Sermon on the Mount, which 
has been rightly designated as the constitution 
of the Christian Church, and you will find 
the keynote of all the duties demanded for 
the divine Fatherhood.? 


REAuIzED THROUGH SONSHIP 


The reason given for doing these things is 
“That ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven.” Fatherhood does not 
mean personal escape from penalty. It means 
brotherhood. We have taken it the other way 
around. That is the reason we have been 
afraid of the implication of Fatherhood. Un- 
fortunately, the latter thought of brotherhood 
is not much more agreeable. Read again this 
wonderful sermon, and you will see how the 
relation of Fatherhood runs all through it. 
The poor in spirit are blessed because of the 
conscious relationship to the Father; already 
they are of the Kingdom. The meek inherit 
the earth because it is their Father’s world, 
and its best treasures are already theirs. The 
peacemakers are blessed because they obtain 
open recognition of their divine sonship. The 
children of the Kingdom are blessed in the 


2 Matt. 5. 45. 


88 THE REASON IN FAITH 


midst of revilings, of nonresistance of evil, of 
love for their enemies, because that is the way 
their Father does who loves both the just and 
the unjust, and makes them all, good and bad, 
the recipients of his loving care. The same 
reason runs like a cord through all the duties 
there expressed. The old thought of purity 
considered only the letter of the act, while 
imagination ran riot unrestrained, cutting hate 
just short of the open act of murder, and lust 
just short of the act of adultery. These 
prepossessions could not live in peace in the 
heart of the true children of the Father. In 
the same way alms was the free and simple 
expression of love, not a means of advertise- 
ment. Prayer was to be not a duty valued by 
its length, posture, or repetition, but the 
simple communion of the child with its Parent. 
Fasting also, as an institution, was of no con- 
sequence except as it had a bearing upon 
one’s effectiveness in doing the Father’s will. 
The ground of forgiveness lay in our forgive- 
ness of our brothers, and on no other ground 
could we ask or expect it. Anxious care was 
to be laid aside in sweet trust that this was 
our Father’s world, and that he cares for us. 
Harsh judgment of our fellows was followed by 
hardness of heart and spirit, which will make 
our own condemnation deeper when, freed from 


THE INCARNATION 89 


the self-prejudice of time and sense, we see 
ourselves, as at last we must, as we are. 


On AN ErerRNAL FouNDATION 


Last of all, he who builds his life on this 
immutable foundation of the divine Father- 
hood is the only man whose house can stand 
when the floods of life sweep, the winds of ad- 
versity blow, and all things are brought to test. 

If there is anything more wonderful than 
this in all the religious history of the ages, it 
has yet to be discovered. It is equally true 
that it is impossible to be surpassed or made 
ancient or uncouth by any discovery of time. 
Man is asked to meet these requirements 
because that is the way his Father does. Is 
there any appeal more commanding to a boy’s 
heart than that? Even to think upon it braces 
the back, clears the vision, and sends new 
impulses coursing through the heart. I can 
forgive those who sin against me, not because 
_they deserve it, but because that is what my 
Father does. I can love and cherish my 
enemies, for that is what my Father does. 
I can be true to the unloving, the ungrateful, 
and the evil because that is my Father’s way, 
and these are my brethren. We have scarcely 
begun, as yet, to comprehend the implications 
of Jesus’ teaching of the divine Fatherhood. 


90 THE REASON IN FAITH 


DEFINITELY SET FortTH IN THE PARABLE 
OF THE PRODIGAL . 

But the consummate teaching of Jesus on 
the divine Fatherhood is to be found in the 
parable of the prodigal son. That parable 
introduced an element into the thought of 
God that men have been afraid to believe, 
even to this hour. To let that worthless son, 
who had imposed in reckless selfishness upon 
his father’s love, broken the father’s heart, 
impoverished the father both in purse and in 
spirit, come home after giving his father long 
days of waiting and agony, is too much for 
poor human nature. That he should be met 
down the dusty road and wept over, and 
dressed in his father’s robes and decked in 
the chain and ring of authority, and given a 
feast, was not only a shock to the religious 
feeling of scribes and Pharisees, but it is also 
a shock to us. We can read the parable and 
give a mental assent, but whenever we see 
this thing in real life, we long to get even 
with the prodigal son. Moreover, the only 
amend that he made was to be sorry he had 
made such a fool of himself and to cease to be 
a fool. Many Christians of to-day would refuse 
to stand for the principles of the parable if 
they were applied in the bald way which Jesus 
represented. 


THE INCARNATION 91 


Yet how true it is to father love and mother 
love! It is the world’s inexplicable mystery. 
What worthless boy who ever wandered 
farthest is not also the apple of his mother’s 
eye? The harsher grew the judgment and 
condemnation of the world, the profounder 
grew the longing of those lonely hearts wait- 
ing at home for the delayed return. That 
was Jesus’ picture of the character of God, 
and if it seems, on the one hand, as it did 
also to the brother who stayed at home, that 
it lets in a lot of unworthy people, and glosses 
over a lot of reprehensible sins, we can take 
refuge in the thought that if we knew our- 
selves better, we should realize that we also 
have been prodigal of the Father’s love, and 
that unless our sins also are remembered 
against us no more forever, we too are irre- 
trievably lost. 


Tue Divine FatHERHOOD TAUGHT BY JESUS 
CONCEPTION OF MESSIAHSHIP 


All these words of Jesus about the divine 
Fatherhood found constant verification in his 
life. ‘That was where he always sought veri- 
fication of his Messiahship. Whenever chal- 
lenged, he answered by this reference: “If I 
do not the works of my Father.” If they 
could condemn him there, he was an impos- 


92 THE REASON IN FAITH 


tor. Once they challenged his Messiahship 
on the ground that he was not descended 
from the Davidic line. He showed the need- 
lessness of any such proof,’ amounting -to the 
specific declaration that he did not care to be 
known as the son of David in the physical 
sense. “If ye believe not my word, believe 
me for the works’ sake.” His conception of 
the Father, then, is to be measured by his 
conception of his own life and Messiahship. 

There was already current among the Jews 
a very decided notion of the Messiahship. 
The reason we fail to recognize this is because 
our Old Testament does not include the latest 
books then common among the people and 
accorded value only second, if not equal, to 
_ our canonical books. Notably was this true 
of the book of Enoch. In it we find not only 
the common Jewish conception of Messiahship, 
but also the phrases in which Jesus clothes 
his own ideas, and also the ideas which largely 
controlled the disciples in their interpretation 
of what Jesus did say, and which may have 
led them into error as to his meaning, as in 
the case of his immediate return in that 
generation. 

Jesus took this prevailing conception of 
Messiahship and modeled it after his own 

3 Mark 12. 35. 


THE INCARNATION 93 


uses, accepting certain portions and rejecting 
others. This has been admirably shown by 
Professor Bruce in his work on the Kingdom 
of God, in which he says: “‘No other type of 
Messiahship could have any attraction for him; 
not the political Messiah of the zealots, whose 
one desire was national independence; not the 
Messiah of common expectation, who should 
restore popular prejudices and make himself an 
idol by becoming a slave; not the Messiah of 
the Pharisees; himself a Pharisee, regarding it 
as his vocation to deliver Israel from pagan 
impurity; not even the austere Messiah of the 
Baptist, who was to separate the good from 
evil by a process of judicial severity, and so 
usher in a kingdom of righteousness. The 
Messiah devoutly to be longed for, and cor- 
dially to be welcomed when he came, in his 
view, was one who should conquer by the 
might of love and truth; who should meet the 
deepest wants of man, not merely gratifying 
the wishes of the Jews, and prove a light and 
Saviour to the whole world; who should be 
conspicuous by patience and helpfulness, rather 
than by inexorable sternness; a humane, uni- 
versal, spiritual Messiah answering to a divine 
kingdom of kindred character; the desire of 
all nations, the fulfillment of humanity’s deep- 
est longings, therefore not destined to be 


94 THE REASON IN FAITH 


superseded, but to stand an eternal Christ, 
the same yesterday, to-day and forever.” 

This conception of Messiahship becomes of 
special significance when we recall the word 
of Jesus to his disciples, ““He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father.”* The love and 
sympathy, identification with the wretched and 
lost, with which his life was vocal, was the 
real revelation of the Father. What Jesus 
would do for man, that his Father would do. 

John had conceived of God as the God of 
judgment and wrath upon all evildoers. ‘To 
him the Messiah was as the winnowing fan, 
to purge the chaff from the wheat, and usher 
in a final Judgment. To his wondering ques- 
tion Jesus sent back only the report of what 
John’s disciples saw: the sick healed, lepers 
cleansed, and the gospel preached to the poor. 
This reply must have been unsatisfactory 
enough to John, but it was the only reply he 
received. Jesus’ idea of the divine Fatherhood 
was to be measured directly by his own exam- 
ple of brotherliness, which extended not only 
to the rich or powerful, or to the agreeable, 
but to the outcast, the sinful and despised. 
This was always his distinctive attitude, from 
that meeting with the outcast woman of 
Samaria, to that final fellowship with the 
~~ 4John 14. 7-11. 


THE INCARNATION 95 


thief on the cross. Anything that cut him off 
from being brotherly he avoided with all the 
strength of his being, and the reason for this 
conception of the Messiahship lay deep in his 
assertion of the divine Fatherhood. 


His TuHoucut or tHe Orrick AND WorK 
OF THE Ho.uy SPIRIT 


This teaching is supreme evidence of the 
sanity of Jesus. If you and I were to invent 
a religion, I have no doubt we should want 
to state the foundations of belief carefully, so 
that there could be no misunderstanding, 
nothing left to the future. We should feel it 
necessary to the maintenance of our views, 
and it would be necessary. We have not the 
cosmic vision of Deity, and he had. Jesus did 
nothing of the kind. He trusted his words to 
oral tradition, liable to misinterpretation by 
men who again and again had misconstrued 
his plainest meanings. Yet Jesus felt no 
hesitancy whatever. Even to-day, with his 
reported words in every hand, we too often 
possess the fear of our Roman Catholic brethren, 
and are not willing to leave men with these 
words of Jesus, without imposing our added 
interpretation. Jesus felt no such necessity. 
He even told the disciples that the gospel 


96 THE REASON IN FAITH 


would grow; that greater things than they 
had yet seen were to come to the Christian 
Church; that new situations would confront 
men, in the face of which all their present 
knowledge would be inadequate. How dared 
he leave them without more explicit direc- 
tions? Simply because, as he was immeas- 
urably greater than you or I, he was willing 
to trust “the voice that speaketh low in every 
heart.” | 

Jesus knew that when the last error had 
been vaunted, and the last pride of the proud- 
est mind had been exploited, the unsatisfied 
soul of man would return to him as the only 
satisfier of the heart. How did he know this? 
Because he believed in the reality of the divine 
Fatherhood, and in the end, having brought 
to man in an indisputable way the conscious- 
ness of Sonship, he knew that the voice of 
the Spirit was their sufficient guide. Who 
else that ever lived had this supreme con- 
fidence concerning the eternity of his work? 
Who else ever trusted the hearts of men to 
speak his word? He assumed his truth was 
the deepest truth which was in them. He 
believed what he said, that he was the Eternal 
Son of the Eternal Father, and that he gave 
unto men the words of eternal Life. 

This breadth of outlook is a long road from 


THE INCARNATION 97 


the spirit that has controlled many of Jesus’ 
followers. If it had been the predominant note 
in the Christian Church, there never would 
have been any terrors for believers, and the 
darkest pages of church history would never 
have been written. We imagine, when we get 
a theological dogma where we can handle it, 
fondle it, see it in print, throw it at people, 
that we have made a great religious advance. 
Henceforth our “I believe’ must become the 
world’s ‘I believe’ or the world lacks not 
only in apprehension but in saving truth. All 
minds that fail to fit into the particular groove 
of our minds we consign to an everlasting per- 
dition with the utmost flippancy. Whenever 
this mood of the devil comes upon us we ought 
to immerse ourselves in those last words of 
Jesus in the upper room, “The Paraclete, 
which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father 
will send in my name, he shall teach you all 
things, and bring all things to your remem- 
brance whatsoever I have said unto you.’” 
“When the Paraclete has come...he shall 
testify of me.”® “It is expedient that I go 
away; for if I go not away, the Paraclete will 
not come unto you.” ‘When he is come, he 
will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, 


§ John 14. 26. 
§ John 15. 26. 


98 THE REASON IN FAITH 


and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe 
not on me; of righteousness, because I go to 
my Father, and ye see me‘no more; of judg- 
ment, because the prince of this world is 
judged. I have yet many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, 
when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will 
guide you into all truth.”’ 

What is this larger truth left to the Spirit 
to communicate to his disciples? Has any 
mind yet grasped it all? I think not. So long 
as the Spirit is in the world the revelation of 
Jesus is bound to grow. In our own generation 
he has taken of the things of Christ and has 
shown them unto us in ways which our fathers 
never dreamed; and though we follow 
reluctantly toward new truth, or new appre- 
hension of old truth, we must eventually 
follow, finding Christ himself evermore to be 
the way, the truth, and the life. 

The same Holy Spirit is in the world to-day. 
I am sure we do not trust him as we ought. 
We do not admit his power and authority over 
men as we ought. If we did, there would be 
new and undreamed of accessions of power to 
the Christian Church. As yet the letters of 
our lesson are not all spelled out, and it seems 
to be our Father’s way to let us spell them 
~ 1 John 16. 7ff. 


THE INCARNATION 99 


for ourselves, lest we should miss the new and 
ever-living interest, and escape the needed 
discipline. 


IncaRNATION Dors not Lower Gop, 
But Exautts MAn 


Objection to a doctrine of the incarnation 
has sometimes come from the most reverent 
and sensitive religious spirits because it seemed 
to them a degradation of God to think of him 
as manifesting himself in a human personality 
in historic time. Especially has this doctrine 
been the bugbear of philosophers who have 
entertained the grandest conceptions of God. 
How can the Infinite manifest himself in finite 
time and space? and categorically there seems 
to be no answer. How can pure spirit act 
upon and through matter? is a question only 
less astounding. We cannot answer it, but we 
can experience it every time we move our 
bodies or drive our minds to creative activity. 
We have, in the final analysis of all such expe- 
riences, spirit acting on matter. How it does 
is the world’s profoundest mystery. That it 
does so act we have no doubt, for on that 
freedom we build our laws against crime and 
establish all the institutions of civilization. 

The denial of incarnation is far more destruc- 
tive than is commonly assumed. If God could 


100 THE REASON IN FAITH 


not manifest himself with moral completeness 
in one human life, there is certainly no assur- 
ance that he could manifést himself meas- 
urably in any life. If we persist in denying 
the possible deity of Jesus and are to remain 
logical, we must deny that the goodness which 
comes to birth in human hearts is of God. 
Moreover, it will be logically impossible then 
to affirm that God is the world-ground, Creator 
and upholder of the world. If we make the 
common assumptions of God’s relation to the 
world, we are forced either to look upon the 
world as his handiwork, a manifestation of 
himself, in historic time and space, or else we 
must deny God altogether. The assumption of 
Deity in Jesus does not imply limitation in 
God, because the significant qualities of God 
are, so far as they affect us, neither omnipo- 
tence, omniscience, nor omnipresence, which are 
the halting terms we use to express the unknown 
relationship of God to a world which we can 
know only as a temporal and spatial order. 
The significant attributes of God are the moral 
attributes of justice, righteousness, and love. 
These we find perfectly and satisfactorily pic- 
tured in Jesus Christ. Obviously, it is these 
moral qualities which could be manifested in 
time and space, and only these. So long as 
in our temporal and spatial relations these are 


THE INCARNATION 101 


the only demonstrable qualities of God, the 
only ones we can understand, why seek those 
that pass our temporal and spatial compre- 
hension? 

The moral effect of assuming the truth of 
the incarnation is to set forth that moral good- 
ness in human lives is by the Divine Spirit. 
This is the manifestation of our sonship to 
God and of our brotherhood to Christ. The 
incarnation, then, does not degrade God, but 
it does lift man to his feet and sets him forth 
as the crown of evolution, the one creature 
capable of voluntary oneness with God. The 
Fatherhood of God is witnessed by the deity 
of Jesus, of whom man is but the younger 
brother. 


Apmission oF Curist’s Morat PERFECTION 
Impuies DEITY 


Reference has already been made to those 
divine attributes under which we attempt to 
express the relation of God to the temporal 
and spatial order. All we can thus do is to 
express the truth that God’s relation to this 
order is not limited as is ours. What is the 
relation of God to time? We immediately lose 
ourselves in the mazes of contradictory assump- 
tions. Either he appears to us static, every- 
thing being for him finished because of fore- 


102 THE REASON IN FAITH 


knowledge, or he is shown to be the victim of 
change. There is little hope that the con- 
troversy will be settled because it can be 
argued only from our temporally and spatially 
limited standpoint. We have not, in other 
words, minds capable of comprehending the 
relations of the nontemporal and nonspatial to 
the temporal and spatial. The existence and 
location of our own souls within our bodies 
presents us with a question equally insoluble 
because it is a shred of the same garment of 
mystery. | 

The supreme revelation of God to man must 
be the moral one, for the spatial and temporal 
limitations seem to be maintained exactly so 
that we can arrive at the moral solution of the 
meaning of life. If, now, in casting about we 
find one life that meets the inexorable moral 
ideal of all men when faithfully presented, we 
have the witness of nothing less than the 
moral nature of man to the fact of the com- 
plete moral manifestation of God. The greater 
proof of the deity of Jesus is not the evidence 
of proof texts, as good as they are, but, rather, 
the living proof of universal life. The story 
of Jesus’ love, sacrifice, and devotion wins 
instant recognition from the moral nature of 
man wherever told. It reaches through all 
social and religious prejudice, through ignor- 


THE INCARNATION 103 


ance and through culture, and is embraced 
even by men who hate the name under which 
it comes. Jesus presents the one blameless 
character that fulfills the highest moral and 
spiritual ideals of man, and the recognition of 
his supreme moral leadership, if we admit 
that all goodness is of God, is essentially a 
recognition that God was perfectly in Christ 
revealing himself unto the world. Unless the 
goodness in Christ was of God, was God, then 
we cannot trust him as our moral leader, and 
doubt is thrown on the worth of moral char- 
acter and the basic goodness in the universe. 
As Browning says, ‘‘Call Christ the illimitable 
God, or lost.” 

If we see God at all, it must be in the face 
of Jesus Christ. And the world is more and 
more picturing the character of God by refer- 
ence to the character of Christ. There never 
was a day when Jesus Christ and his gospel 
found such avenues to the heart of man. As 
one has aptly stated it, “The greatness of 
Christ is the surprise of the centuries.” Hu- 
manity toils breathless, laboring heavily at the 
oar, through the long night, only to find, as 
it reaches land again and sees the shore through 
the mist, that the Master is there first, with 
the fire kindled and a home welcome to every 
new land. 


104 THE REASON IN FAITH 


The advent of a vaster and nobler faith 
means every time the advent of a vaster and 
nobler Christ. Everything else is coming more 
and more to be measured by him. Every- 
thing that cannot stand measurement by his 
principles is seen to be unworthy. It does not 
disturb us because the one hundred and thirty- 
seventh Psalm declares, in pagan glee, the 
beatitude of him who dashes out the brains 
of little ones against the stones, nor that the 
men of an earlier age interpreted the com- 
mand of God to mean the slaughter of inno- 
cent victims in an exterminating war. We 
know that this is not in keeping with the 
spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. We feel that such 
a spirit is forever forbidden us. 

We see the deity of Christ as a necessary 
assumption, not after the ancient theological 
order, but that it is necessary if we are to 
think of any kinship between man and God. 
The Unitarian position fixes a great gulf be- 
tween God and humanity which makes it 
impossible for the one to go to the other, or 
to find any basis of communication or fellow- 
ship. If God could not reveal himself in the 
man Jesus, he cannot reveal himself in any 
man. Christ brings God nearer, establishes 
the divine Fatherhood, and makes clear the 
divine sonship; not only so, but the philosoph- 


a ae ~ 


= oe. 


THE INCARNATION 105 


ical trend of intelligent thinking is toward 
this position. 

We see that a religion of fear has no effective 
power over the hearts of men. We also see 
that, while old figures of speech no longer 
move men, there is rising over the horizon 
of the mind a new sense of the awfulness of 
sin, the age-long retribution which it carries in 
itself, that no man is able to escape. 

We are coming to see that this penalty 
cannot be altogether avoided by any sinner, 
nor can it be in any degree avoided by the 
absolution of any priest, nor by the muttering 
of any magic name, nor by the thoughtless 
taking of any creed upon our lips, nor by 
mental assent to any beliefs, but only by 
repentance that makes a man a new creature 
with a new character wherein old things have 
passed away, and all things have become new. 

We see with a new force that no man can 
hate his neighbor and with any measure of 
truth say that he loves God. We see that 
the self-denial and sacrifice, the service per- 
formed to the last and feeblest and most 
decrepit creature, in humility of heart and 
in the name of Christ, has been a service to 
Christ himself. 

We see that it is safe to trust the infinite 
love of the Father, that too long our thought 


106 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of the Father’s love has been placed at a dis- 
advantage with the love of Christ. Do we 
love any human being, then God loves them 
infinitely more. Would we do all we could 
to rescue him from himself, all that and infin- 
itely more God would do for him. Because 
our highest human love, and the love brought 
to us in the earthly example of Jesus, are only 
the reflection of what, in God, is a limitless 
sea, having no shore or bound. | 

It is hard to realize what Christ will mean 
to the days that are coming. He is sure to 
speak with an ever-increasing authority. Jesus 
of Nazareth is the one ultimate goal of hu- 
manity. The race is like one who has seen a 
vision, and henceforth there can be no rest, 
no satisfaction, no peace of mind until the 
vision be attained. Christ will mean vastly 
more to the coming age than to our own. 
Into the everwidening interpretation of Christ 
must go the interpretation of peoples now 
pagan. ‘The great missionary movement is 
bound to give a new appreciation of Christ. 
Charles Cuthbert Hall has shown how the 
highest and fullest appreciation of Christ is 
delayed until to the Western content of Chris- 
tianity has been added the richness of the 
Oriental mysticism. 

The kingdom of Jesus Christ is coming, that 


THE INCARNATION 107 


will bring the nations of the whole earth into 
the tender and yet compelling bonds of uni- 
versal brotherhood. AII that is unbrotherly 
in custom or in practice will have to go. Old 
superstitions that have bound men in thral- 
dom for ages, slavery, injustice, the greed of 
“thine and mine,” long-standing social tyran- 
nies, the horrors of the war, will no more possess 
the earth. We are beginning to see the first 
gleams of such a movement. 

Christ will never have conquered the earth 
until he has awakened devotion in the hearts 
of individual men. The culmination may be 
delayed. “No one knoweth but the Father”’ 
when that day shall break in its full splendor, 
but the waiting earth is the witness, and the 
need of man is the prophecy that it will come. 


“We may be lying in the ground 
When it awakes the world to wonder, 
But we have seen it gathering round, 
And heard its voice of living thunder, 
’Tis coming, yes, tis coming!” 


Yes, and much better than that, there will 
be unnumbered voices in that day, like the 
sound of many waters, singing the song of 
Moses and the Lamb. There will be the voices 
of men from all lands and tribes and kindred, 
and from all ages. 


108 THE REASON IN FAITH 


“‘As shadows, cast by cloud and sun, 
Flit o’er the summer grass, 
So, in thy sight, Almighty One, 
Earth’s generations pass. 


“And as the years, an endless host, 
Come swiftly pressing on, 
The brightest names that earth can boast 
Just glisten and are gone. 


“Yet doth the star of Bethlehem shed 
A luster pure and sweet, 
And still it leads, as once it led, 
To the Messiah’s feet.” 


INCARNATION DEMANDED BY THE PROBLEM | 
oF Evin 


An incarnation was necessary to justify the 
existence of pain and evil in the world and to 
show that, in spite of appearances, the heart 
of the Eternal is love. If God being able to 
order a universe in which there should be 
neither sin nor pain, orders one where the 
contrary is true, he must show, first, that the 
suffering is disciplinary, and, second, that he 
is willing to share it in the task of working 
out man’s redemption. There is deadlock, and 
deadlock only, in philosophy and in theology 
unless the appearance of God in the person 
of Christ be allowed. There is logically and 
practically no solution for the deeper problems 


THE INCARNATION 109 


of human existence apart from the deity and 
suffering of Jesus. The whole problem of 
reconciliation centers here. 

How this can be is a great mystery. The 
important fact is that it is. How it should 
be explained is another matter. This desire 
to explain the participation of God in the 
world through Christ has been the source of 
much unprofitable theorizing which has often 
confused the practical issues. We have had 
our governmental and other theories of the 
atonement. God was an abstract justice. 
Justice required punishment for every sinner. 
Man has sold himself to the devil by sin and 
must needs be ransomed. Because of sin the 
whole world lay under the divine wrath. Jesus 
offered himself to appease this wrath and pay 
a ransom for man. For his sake wrath was 
turned aside and satisfied with the punishment 
of the innocent for the guilty. God was 
eternal wrath and Jesus was eternal love. 
No wonder there were charges of polytheism 
against the then current trinitarianism. 

In the view of some the office of Jesus was 
that of a substitute. Some victim was required 
to meet the demands of justice. So Jesus 
became the innocent victim that paid the 
price for our sins. These ideas were written 
into Christian hymns and are still the choice 


110 THE REASON IN FAITH 


theological possession of many. They were 
calculated to meet the unspiritual desires of 
some who rejoice in having a cross borne for 
them that will obviate the necessity for their 
bearing any cross or paying any price. The 
greatest trouble with these mechanical theories 
of the atonement is their faculty of raising 
more serious questions than they are able to 
settle. The demand for a blind vengeance 
that takes it out on the first victim offered, 
and apart from a larger and purposive love, 
is an unethical demand. Furthermore, no 
justice can ever be satisfied with an injustice. 
To kill an innocent man for the wrong of the 
sinner would never satisfy justice in any but 
an immoral world. It will further be discovered 
that while theoretically the sins of the indi- 
vidual and the world are taken away by the 
act of One, in fact they remain until the indi- 
vidual removes them from his life, through 
the confidence in victory that comes through 
the living presence of the Christ. It becomes 
evident also on reflection that though the 
world is said to be redeemed from the wrath 
of sin, it is not, and that the wrath abides as 
long as sin in the world and in the individual 
abides. That even while men are forgiven 
they are called upon to endure the penalty of 
old sins. The fact is that these theories could 


THE INCARNATION 111 


have been accepted only by minds of a cer- 
tain legal cast which were long accustomed 
to irresponsible and despotic governmental 
tyrannies. 

“But if we let go these,’ some one says, 
“what will we believe? What have we to 
take its place?”? Well—pardon the suggestion 
—why not accept the New Testament as con- 
taining a sufficient statement of the matter, 
realizing that any statement of truth is vain 
without the experience of the individual of 
sins forgiven and overcome, and a new life of 
obedience replacing the old life of sin and 
rebellion? Apart from experience of them in 
life, all religious statements are as powerless 
for religion as the prayermills of the Orient. 
The unexplained fact that lies behind many 
of these statements is the unreckoned law of 
compensation which no man can altogether 
avoid in life. The sinner is forgiven, but may 
not be altogether freed from the natural con- 
sequences of his sin. The powers of life wasted 
in sins of profligacy cannot be replaced. The 
mind burdened with the repulsive memories 
of the past has no present Lethe in which it 
may wash. There is still present the con- 
sciousness of evil influences which continue 
their career of evil long after the man has 
repented. No mechanical theory, however 


112 THE REASON IN FAITH 


good, can take the place of redemption in 
fact and in life. What God wants in us is not 
so much remorse for past sins as the attain- 
ment of moral character. Repentance in the 
face of approaching punishment is not char- 
acter. God freely forgives the sinner, but the 
one requirement or requisite of forgiveness is 
a repentance which includes the forsaking of 
sin, and the setting in motion of new forces 
of life which shall measurably redeem his past. 
God is content even far beyond the patience 
of men if he can discover in any person an 
effort or struggle toward righteousness. ‘The 
fact of forgiveness, the sympathy of the Eter- 
nal with man’s lowly struggle away from base- 
ness, the possibility of overcoming every sin, 
the part which the Christ takes in every moral 
victory, the willingness of God to tent with 
us along the common plains of life and to abide 
with us through storm and sunshine until the 
conquest over self and the world is won, and 
then to receive us to himselfi—these are the 
things that have been brought to us by the 
incarnation. It is sufficient if we experience 
these great truths in life. And if they fail to 
make us new creatures in Christ Jesus, there 
is nothing about all the beliefs in the world 
that can do aught for us. 


THE INCARNATION 113 


Lire THE SupREME AUTHORITY 


Christian people have too often forgotten 
that the supreme revelation is the living Christ 
himself. The New Testament is revelation 
just to the extent that the living Christ by 
impact upon his disciples was able to get his 
message over to the world of men. If in this 
modern age this living Christ shall nowhere 
live again in the thoughts, deeds, dreams, and 
activities of men, then dead indeed he is. 
The greatest and most unanswerable of all 
authorities is the living authority. It cannot 
possibly be gainsaid because it bears the wit- 
ness of life. The witness of life is the most 
convincing to the modern mind as it has been 
to all ages. The only commanding authority 
anywhere in the world is not verbal authority 
but living authority. I can gainsay all your 
theories and with Sophist diligence can put 
them all to shame. Theological controversy 
has never been profitable because its only end 
was the exhaustion or death of one of the 
participants; but the loving faithfulness of my 
enemy, though scorned and misinterpreted by 
me, becomes either the rock of my salvation 
or my damnation. I cannot live in its presence 
and not be changed by it for better or for 
worse. It becomes the test of judgment upon 


114 THE REASON IN FAITH 


my own life. In life, then, we find the su- 
preme authority, and in the life of the Son 
of God we have a rock of salvation if we bring 
our lives into accord, or a millstone of destruc- 
tion if we reject. To reject the moral goodness 
of the Man of Nazareth is to make the supreme 
decision for evil; to accept and to follow is 
to live. 


CHAPTER V 


THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Tuat the modern mind with its interest in 
the psychical history of man is so indifferent 
to the theological doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
cannot be attributed altogether to the mate- 
rialism of our age. In most discussions of a 
theological order there has been a vagueness 
and mysticism here that has not been evident 
in the discussion of God and the incarnation. 
One can scarcely get the history of trinitarian 
doctrine clearly without recalling something of 
the possible influence upon it of the Platon- 
istic Philo the Jew. The idea suggests itself 
to the mind whether or not the mysticism that 
gathers about the Christian conception of the 
Holy Spirit may not have had some of its 
sources in this pre-Christian mysticism. There 
is, of course, the more obvious reason that 
the Holy Spirit is a matter of personal expe- 
rience the basis of which is pure mysticism. 

Is there, then, a reasonableness to this doc- 
trine? Can it be shown to be in keeping with 


the best human experience? What is the 
115 


116 THE REASON IN FAITH 


meaning and application and what the par- 
ticular place of the Holy Spirit in Christian 
self-realization and activity? The mystical 
character of the doctrine has undoubtedly 
driven from its consideration many earnest 
spirits who were of an exceedingly practical 
order, and who have never dreamed it was 
possible to apply here the test of reasonable- 
ness. This feeling has been intensified by 
the mystics, who have set it up against reason 
as a sort of propaganda against the “carnal 
mind.” In this case “mind” has been com- 
pelled to bear the stigma that rightly belonged 
to “carnal.” The result has wrought m some 
devotees of the doctrine a hostility toward 
reason and a plain neglect of the most obvious 
sources of ethical knowledge in the interests 
of a blind unreasoning “feeling” which had 
no issue in ethical living, but ended m an 
innocuous ecstasy which often left the saint 
less in moral self-control than in the begin- 
ning. It is necessary to distinguish sharply 
true religion, which is fundamentally ethical 
self-control, from a sometimes erotic, some- 
times hypnotic and merely suggestive “expe- 
rience” of religion. This tendency has always 
been considered abnormal in the history of 
Christianity and has always been frowned upon 
and discredited when it appeared. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 117 


In view of these facts it is well, then, to 
seek the reasonableness of a doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit. 


Tue NeEEp To PersonauizeE Deity 


The foremost reason for assuming the reality 
of the Holy Spirit as a necessary part of the 
Godhead would seem to lie in the personal- 
izing of the Divinity. By this is meant that 
wider personalization which was made necessary 
for the communication of the divine will to 
the disciples after the Master was no longer 
with them. They naturally felt themselves all 
at sea for counsel and guidance, and there 
needed to come into their consciousness the 
assurance that the companionship and guidance 
of Jesus had not ceased at his death. Out of 
the fact and the doctrine of incarnation of 
God in Christ arose this new demand, a de- 
mand which had never before been so keenly 
felt. The taking away from them of that 
Presence which they “had trusted should 
redeem Israel’? threw them back on the deeper 
sources of their own experience and left them 
to discover there that of which they could 
not be conscious either before his coming or 
during the period of his living presence. That 
this new consciousness was vital and essential 
to the progress of Christianity is evidenced 


118 THE REASON IN FAITH 


by the use they made of it. To those early 
disciples it must: have meant the same as to 
that later one we know so well, who wrote: 


“I worship thee, O Holy Ghost, 
I love to worship thee; 
My risen Lord for aye were lost 
But for thy company.” 


In the strength of it they moved forth to the 
audacious conquest of the world without an 
apparent doubt in the final outcome in spite 
of all present difficulties and hostilities that 
would have been overwhelming but for this 
consciousness. There can be no doubt in the 
light of early Christian writings that this 
assurance, witness, or whatever one may call 
it, was looked upon by them as taking the 
place of companionship vacated by their cru- 
cified Lord, and to it they looked for guidance 
in truth and for escape from physical foes. 
In other words, the doctrine grew out of their 
demand for such a personalization of God as 
the living presence of Jesus had made man- 
ifest, and the belief stood the test of actual 
experience in the accomplishment of their 
tasks. 

, Whatever one may think of their wisdom 
and adherence to truth, or even of their self- 
deception, an impartial historian must admit 
that, so far as we know, the experience was 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 119 


unique in the history of humanity, and it led 
likewise to unique and lasting results. These 
results have been so constant in the history 
of the Christian Church and of individual 
experience as to have become one of the 
dependables of Christian practice and faith. 


To EstABLisH THE ComMoN IDENTITY 
OF GOODNESS 


The second result flowing from the assump- 
tion of reality in the Holy Spirit is the identi- 
fication which it makes of all goodness with 
the divine nature. This is an important truth 
which has been too often overlooked in the 
progress of Christianity. Goodness, spiritual- 
ity, moral self-discipline, humility, love were 
all considered as fruits of the Spirit which 
did not appear save as they were brought 
into actual being by the presence and directing 
energy of God. The incarnation of Jesus would 
have been incomplete without this other factor. 
Men came to know the possibility of moving 
to the same motives to which his life had 
moved. As this profound force had been 
recognized by himself as the “Father” in him, 
so some measure of the same assurance was 
granted them. That spirit which became the 
master note to their song of life was the spirit 


120 THE REASON IN FAITH 


which they had seen manifested in Christ, and 
it was the Spirit of God acting in them. In 
fact, they conceived that a man could not 
act in such a way as to please God and to 
fulfill his true destiny without acting in the 
Spirit. This was made necessary because the 
proper performance of any task depends upon 
the spirit in which it is done. Just as one 
needs the genius which springs from love, 
from appreciation, from insight in order to 
paint a worthy picture or write a real poem, 
so spiritual genius was necessary for living a 
truly Christian life. Just as the life of Jesus 
had not been one primarily of ritualistic 
observance nor priestly formality and dog- 
gedly pursued duty, but of an inspiring and 
joyous fulfillment of deep-seated desire, so 
these men conceived through the illumination 
that had come to them that they must catch 
within them the stirrings of the same spiritual 
genius. The distinction that they discovered 
is just the distinction between Christianity 
and Phariseeism. This new experience became 
to them not only a common tie of fellowship, 
but established a meaning to communion or 
fellowship with God and each other. They 
rightly felt that it was God working in and 
through them to will and to do of his own 
good pleasure. Furthermore, they did not 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 121 


make the mistake which is sometimes made 
of identifying their emotional feelmgs with 
religion. With a sane reasonableness they 
insisted upon applying the ethical test of prac- 
tical character and works, and where this 
appeared they decided the Spirit of God must 
have been present. 

It was a daring thing for the early church 
thus to recognize the divine character of all 
true goodness of the heart as opposed to a 
goodness of mere formality. To a great many 
even to-day it seems altogether too daring. 
To such it no doubt seems like making good- 
ness too common, too easy. But if the good- 
ness of God is to be something so far apart 
from us that we can never realize it, the claim 
to be the children of God becomes. only a 
solemn and hollow mockery. And even yet so 
few there are who follow consistently and 
altogether the guidance of this supreme inspira- 
tion that their lives shine out over the age 
with an uncommon splendor which reminds us 
at once of the Great Forerunner and Elder 
Brother. 


SEPARATION FRoM THE SPIRIT A TRAGEDY 


The first condition for the realization of the 
Holy Spirit is mental and moral honesty. 


~ 


122 THE REASON IN FAITH 


This is the foundation of the teaching of Jesus 
with regard to the single eye. In any case of 
self-guidance or self-direction it will be seen 
that unless there is a straightforwardness with 
oneself there is no chance for the springs of 
action to be clear, because out of the heart 
are the issues of life. In cases where mental 
dishonesty has been practiced there comes 
eventually an inability through prejudice to 
recognize the truth. By adherence to willful 
courses of action dressed to one’s own thinking 
with a garb of respectability, religious for- 
mality, or external righteousness, there grows 
an inability to exercise a clear and honest 
judgment. In time it may come to pass that 
the mind is so warped by the prejudice of 
what it wants to see and do that the evil im- 
presses one as the good and the good evil. 
Such a condition can be brought about only 
by acts of mental dishonesty and insincerity 
with oneself and with one’s world. This state 
is described as the sin against the Holy Spirit, 
and the tragedy lies in the skilled indifference 
of the sinner. It is not that he desires to be 
forgiven, and cannot be, but, rather, that 
such a love for evil has grown within him that 
there is no desire for repentance. The con- 
dition is one of moral atrophy through con- 
sistent and continued refusal to recognize the 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 123 


norms of righteousness for one’s own conduct. 
The impulses toward righteousness may be 
inhibited by acts of will until they are no 
longer active. The man actually succeeds in 
strangling his own better nature, and his pun- 
ishment can be nothing less than the character 
he has himself produced. If this condition 
has been attended by religious hypocrisy, the 
situation is aggravated because the sinner 
retains the external forms of religion which 
make the self-deception more complete. Thus 
there grows up within the soul a separation 
from its better self,! or its ideal self, which is 
nothing less than a separation from God. The 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit emphasizes the 
internal fact of religion and hence is psycho- 
logically correct. Where this process has been 
run out to its easy limit, the spiritual blind- 
ness is complete and irremediable. It is this 
phase of experience which is so powerfully 
pictured by Ibsen in Peer Gynt, whose sins 
have been deepened by religious cant and 
adherence to religious forms covering an intol- 
erable selfishness which has brought him to 
such a state that the button-molder discovers 
no hope for him and threatens to put him into 
the melting ladle to extract what little of real 
metal God endowed him with originally. 

1 Charles S. Royce, World and Individual—On the Ideal Self. 


124 THE REASON IN FAITH 


Tue NgeEpD To ProvipE A GROUND 
or AUTHORITY 


In the final analysis the doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit provides the ultimate ground of 
authority. This may not at once seem evident 
in the face of the claim for infallibility in 
institution, Pope, creed, or Scripture, but such 
is the case. Only such truth as recommends 
itself to an enlightened conscience can be 
conscientiously received. The exercise of this 
discriminatory power cannot be deputed to 
any institution, council, or age. The testi- 
mony of man’s own spiritual judgment was 
always the basis of Jesus’ appeal for belief in 
himself. He never based that appeal on 
authority. Eventually each man must choose 
for himself and decide within his own conscious- 
ness the right and the wrong. Such is the 
nature of the human soul that individual 
decision is necessary for individual salvation. 
No profounder mistake can be made than to 
attempt to impress upon the rising generation 
any form of words. Living theologies spring 
from the heart of living experiences of God. 
Unless the new generation can discover for it- 
self this fountain of living inspiration, all creed- 
al subscriptions become worse than nothing. 
They serve only to keep from that age which 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 125 


thus unquestioningly accepts them a recog- 
nition of its own spiritual and mental poverty. 

The only corrective is a profound belief 
in the power of the Holy Spirit to guide men 
into all truth. It is just the absence of belief 
in the reality of the Holy Spirit in all ages 
which has led to the attempt by one age to 
fasten upon the following age the shackles of 
its own expressions of living truth. In our 
smug self-conceit of perfect spiritual expres- 
sion we would quarrel with God over his care- 
lessness in leaving to the new generation the 
privilege and the task of finding God for itself. 

So in every age truth must be put con- 
tinually anew in the crucible in order that 
every rising generation may struggle to its 
own expression of God. One need not in the 
recognition of this truth disparage the help 
which the past has to give. It may erect 
guideposts for those who come after. These 
are of unspeakable value as indicating what 
others have found out about God. ‘They are 
of no avail unless those of the future find out 
God for themselves and largely in their own 
way. That is the God-given privilege of a 
living soul, and ultimate authority is grounded 
at the center in the witness of the Spirit, or 
the internal consciousness of God and right- 
eousness. 


126 THE REASON IN FAITH 


Tue Source or Livinec GuiIpANcE 


Perhaps the greatest function of the Holy 
Spirit is to furnish a living guidance for the 
spirit of man. All norms of truth except 
living norms pass away with the fashions and 
moods of the age that gave them birth. All 
except living norms of truth pertain to a race, 
a nation, an age, or a civilization and are 
soon outworn. The exaltation of external 
authority of any kind indicates a distrust of 
that God who speaketh low in every heart, 
to whom the children of every age are unutter- 
ably dear, and who will not permanently leave 
any man or generation without the witness 
of himself. For we do not have to make men 
religious. The demands of our spiritual nature 
are insistent and once there has: shone upon 
the world the clear light of the God in Christ, 
man must come in the end to embrace it. 
Augustine uttered a supreme truth in the 
word, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and 
our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” 
Nothing but the Christ-realization is fitted to 
satisfy the spiritual longing of man. And 
because this is so, no true and efficient doc- 
trine of God can leave out the office and func- 
tion of the Holy Spirit. 

If it were not so, God could not have been 


THE HOLY SPIRIT 127 


in Christ, nor could God be in us, nor could 
there be any assurance of goodness in men. 
It is because in Christ we have the manifesta- 
tion of God in the flesh, and because we have 
in the spirit of man a candle of the Lord, that 
the three can meet in religious experience. To 
leave out one Person of the Trinity would be 
to make an impassable gulf between man and 


God. 


CHAPTER VI 
PRAYER AND THE WORLD-ORDER 


A DOMINANTLY scientific spirit has served to 
shake to its very foundation the conception 
of prayer which to many devout minds seems 
necessary if it is to possess any force. It 1s, 
therefore, important to study the nature of 
prayer and its use and likewise to reflect upon 
its examples in the highest type of prayer of 
which we have record. We need also to con- 
sider prayer from the standpoint of the world- 
order and determine whether there is that 
about it which is in conflict with the reverent 
scientific mind. The skepticism concerning 
prayer has gone deep into the common thought 
of the present generation so that it is unfor- 
tunately about the least used of religious 
functions where there are many evidences that 
it is the one most needing exercise. How are 
we to account for the so general apathy? May 
it not spring from a wrong interpretation or 
from a false emphasis of some lesser phase of 


prayer? It is quite worthy the attention of 
128 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 129 


the serious student of religious problems to 
solve the present deadlock and to assist in 
bringing a new confidence where such con- 
fidence may rightly appeal to the reason of 
thinking men. 

There is reason to believe that the new 
conception of a universe of inevitable and uni- 
form law, wherein there is no place for chance 
and only a limited place for contingency of 
any kind, has helped bring the present indiffer- 
ence to prayer. The earlier conception was 
based upon an idea of the world as essentially 
capricious, in which anything might happen 
because there were no inexorable laws. That 
older world was one in which magic had a 
large place because of the slight understanding 
of forces whose uniformity had not yet been 
determined. The universe was geocentric and 
man was the most important creature in it. 
The result was to make systems of thought 
homocentric. To such an age it was not a 
daring thought to imagine the whole cycle 
of laws and uniformities interrupted and nulli- 
fied for the special salvation of a highland clan 
at war with its enemies, or even of individuals. 
With the coming of the Copernican theory all 
was changed. There was indeed much reason 
why the church of that time should oppose 
the Copernican hypothesis, on the ground that 


130 THE REASON IN FAITH 


it was hostile to religion and destructive of 
biblical authority. It was destructive of the 
prevailing theology of the time. Its introduc- 
tion was one of the leading inducements to 
the Reformation. A provincial God was lost 
in the thought of a universe whose vastness 
was an intoxication to the hitherto parochial 
mind. Thereupon sprang a skepticism which 
has held the minds of many until our own 
time. Too few have been the real attempts at 
reconciliation between prayer and rationality. 
Even yet there are many who feel that recon- 
ciliation is not in keeping with piety. The 
result has been that an age given more and 
more to the scientific aspect of thought has 
concluded that it could safely neglect, the 
consideration altogether. There are likewise 
many truly earnest and devout souls who 
feel the force, the beauty, and the power ot 
scientific conceptions, who strongly desire but 
do not see their way clear to an unqualified 
faith. And yet there are few who do not in 
some way practice prayer and find it helpful 
in the darker passages of life. What, then, 
is prayer and what may be the relation which 
it sustains to a world-order? Has it a place 
in the world as we now know it, or is it, as some 
of our unbelieving friends love to assume, the 
failing remnant of an ancient superstition? 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 131 


Tur CoNCEPTION OF PRAYER AS A CHANGING 
OF THE SUPREME ORDER 


Prayer is frequently conceived as a changing 
of the supreme order. It may be well to begin 
with this conception, as it is perhaps the most 
common one. It is seldom stated in this 
form because thus to state it would be to 
reveal its inconsistency. Prayer in this sense 
is usually put in the light of a change of the 
divine mind which is naturally more or less 
indifferent to consequences except when it 
feels the particular pull of intercession. The 
logical conclusion to draw is that God could 
not save himself nor his world without the 
prayer of men, which is quite true indeed, 
but in a sense just opposite to that generally 
taken, for it is necessarily impious to consider 
God indifferent to his world and only tardily 
moved to care for it under the persistent 
solicitations of religious busybodies. If we are 
ever to make anything of prayer, we must 
look upon it not as man changing either the 
supreme mind or order to his own capricious 
taste, but man as putting himself in tune 
with the divine order that the will of God 
may begin to operate in him. 

The immediate objection that will be raised 
against this point will be the exhortation to 


132 THE REASON IN FAITH 


importunity taught in the parable of the un- 
just judge who heard the woman’s prayer for 
justice not from a love of justice but from a 
love of ease. No right-thinking man can take 
seriously the suggestion that Jesus meant 
thus to portray the character of God. The 
emphasis is not necessarily on the unwilling- 
ness of God to hear, but is, rather, on the 
value of importunity. We surely cannot 
accomplish the difficult tasks of life in a des- 
ultory way. It is only the man who makes 
every moment and every act a prayer for 
success that is really able to accomplish the 
important things of life. The value of prayer 
is to clear his purpose from the unessential 
and the unreal, to give him insight into God’s 
will and put him in working harmony with 
that will. Thus out of his importunate plead- 
ing and working come results that can be 
had in no other way. 

A study of the leading prayers of the world 
helps to bear out this conception. We might 
expect it in the highest type of prayer of all, 
that is, in the prayers of Jesus. The great 
exordium of the Lord’s Prayer is calculated 
first of all to emphasize the necessity of accord 
with the divine mind, for it begins: ‘Hallowed 
be thy name in earth as it is in heaven: thy 
kingdom come in earth as it is in heaven: 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 133 


thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” 
One could not think recognition more com- 
plete that the primal object of prayer is to 
put man en rapport with God, preceding as it 
does the prayer for individual needs. This 
truth gains emphasis from a consideration of 
the final prayer in Gethsemane, where the 
heart of the divine response is put in the closing 
words like the close of a heavenly benediction 
upon the mental and spiritual struggle of 
which it was a part—“not my will but thine 
be done.” The significance of this was clearly 
understood by the author of. Hebrews, who 
looked on that final clause of accommodation 
to the Supreme Will as the answer to Jesus’ 
prayer, ““Who in the days of his flesh, when 
he had offered up prayers and supplications 
with strong crying and tears unto Him that 
was able to save him from death, and was 
heard in that he feared.” That is, the coor- 
dination of his will to his Father’s was the 
great outcome of his prayer, and if we choose 
not to take this as the answer to his prayer, 
we have only the choice of the conclusion 
there was none.1 

A study of the great Old-Testament prayers 
shows a striking lack of the element which 
would look on God as a handy assistant from 

1See also John 12. 27; 17. 1-26. 


134 THE REASON IN FAITH 


the results of one’s own misdoings or the magic 
purveyor of unaccountable and unearned for- 
tune for the faithful. Jacob’s essentially selfish 
prayer at Bethel is almost an exception. 

Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, and Heze- 
kiah,? great national leaders, pray for the 
perpetuity of Israel not for its own sake but 
because the perpetuity of the worship of Jehovah 
is dependent upon Israel’s preservation. 

Similar is the prayer of Isaiah? for the 
preservation of a distinctive Israel, distinctive 
in the holiness of their relations to Jehovah. 

The prayers of Nehemiah’ and of Jeremiah® 
are the expressions of a mighty longing, a 
plea for the remembrance of the half-forgotten 
entente with his chosen people. | 

That which we find true of prayer in its 
leading Old-Testament documents as well as 
in the prayers of Jesus is also markedly true 
of the noblest prayer of the pagan world, the 
Stoic prayer of Cleanthes. 

“We are Thy offspring, and alone of living 
creatures possess a voice which is the image 
of reason. Therefore I will forever sing Thee 


2 Exod. 32. 11; Num. 14. 13; Deut. 3. 24; Josh. 7. 8; 2 Sam. 
7. 25; 1 Kings 8. 25; 2 Kings 19. 15. 


8 Tsa. 63. 17. 
«Neh. 1. 8; 9. 32. 
5 Jer. 14. 2. 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 135 


and celebrate Thy power. All this universe 
rolling round the earth obeys Thee, and fol- 
lows willingly at Thy command. Such a 
minister hast Thou in Thy invincible hands, 
the two-edged, flaming, vivid thunderbolt. O 
King, Most High, nothing is done without 
Thee, neither in heaven or on earth, nor in 
the sea, except what the wicked do in their 
foolishness. Thou makest order out of dis- 
order, and what is worthless becomes precious 
in Thy sight; for Thou hast fitted together 
good and evil into one, and hast established 
one law that exists forever. But the wicked 
fly from Thy law, unhappy ones, and though 
they desire to possess what is good, yet they 
see not, neither do they hear the universal 
law of God. If they would follow it with 
understanding, they might have a good life. 
But they go astray, each after his own devices, 
some vainly striving after reputation, others 
turning aside after gain excessively, others 
after riotous living and wantonness. Nay, but, 
O Zeus, Giver of all things, who dwellest in 
dark clouds and rulest over the thunder, de- 
liver men from their foolishness. Scatter it 
from their souls, and grant them to obtain 
wisdom, for by wisdom Thou dost rightly 
govern all things; that being honored we may 
repay Thee with honor, singing Thy works 


136 THE REASON IN FAITH 


without ceasing, as it is right for us to do. 
For there is no greater thing than this, either 
for mortal men or for the Gods, to au rightly 
the universal law.” 

The predominating characteristic of all these 
prayers is their recognition of the necessity 
of unity of the individual with the will of 
God, adaptation to the divine order which is 
the essential element of all true worship. 

A very much overlooked fact among reli- 
gious people is the sanctity of the supreme 
order of uniformity which we call natural law. 
In the ultimate the scientist cannot tell us 
what is the mysterious force presiding over 
matter and producing both activity and life. 
He can tell us what electricity will do under 
certain conditions; he cannot tell us what it 
is. He can tell us about the activity of the 
living cell; he cannot tell us what it is except 
to describe the phenomena of its activity. 
He may, to aid the imagination, picture the 
atom as made up of protons and electrons, 
but these he knows only through the measur- 
able forms of energy given off. His meta- 
physics of the atom is simply his attempt to 
aid the imagination in conceiving the ground 
of the activity. The proton and electron are 
the scientific guess, and as to the force which 
grounds their mutual attraction he has nothing. 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 137 


It might quite as well be the mind of a su- 
preme Intelligence. This guess is worth as 
a guess quite as much as his “electrical attrac- 
tion,’ and it does actually mean much more 
because it is in reasonable keeping with a 
host of other facts and values that are sure 
but inexplicable upon any mechanistic or 
materialistic hypothesis. If one is to accept 
both science and theism, he must assume 
then that this back-lying force or activity is 
nothing less than the divine will and all natural 
laws are the uniformities of that will in action. 
In such a case there would be a literal truth 
to the words, “In Him we live and move and 
have our being.” It would be true likewise 
that the old distinction between sacred and 
secular would be done away, for all law would 
be an expression of the Supreme Mind. All 
life, then, would be a miracle, not in the sense 
of a wonder but in the sense of being momen- 
tarily depending for its existence upon the 
divine will. The order of nature is, then, 
the order of God, and its attempted infraction 
becomes a kind of impiety. The man who 
would become most efficient must bring him- 
self to the point of obedience to these laws. 
It is unreasonable to expect that God will 
upset the uniformity of his action where merely 
trivial matters are involved. Apparently, this 


138 THE REASON IN FAITH 


uniformity or dependableness of the laws of 
nature should form the first article of any 
faith in God. Because of it life is enabled to 
go on. If the laws of gravitation could be 
upset by the prayer of an individual, it would 
mean destruction for the remainder of the 
race. As a fact, the rain is sent impartially 
upon the just and the unjust, the tower of 
Siloam is no respecter of persons in its fall. 
Exposure to contagion picks off the innocent 
and the guilty. Our only hope to escape the 
general wreckage which flows from broken law 
is to conform our wills and our activity to the 
divine will and activity. Then shall we find 
that there is a special care for the lawkeeper, 
a care which is in the very nature of the case. 
We may weep over the fact that fire burns 
the innocent child, but the law is for the gen- 
eral good, fire being useful to the race and 
pain being not an evil but a blessed signal 
of warning that preserves the race from un- 
willing self-destruction. Besides, we have been 
endowed with brains and a sense of moral 
responsibility which puts us under obligation 
to keep children and incompetents out of the 
fire. The failure to think clearly upon this 
point is costing the world a frightful toll of 
confusion, and even of life itself. 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 139 


Tue THREEFOLD NATURE OF PRAYER 


Whether we think of prayer as appeal or 
worship, it becomes evident that it is to be 
considered, first of all, from its effect upon 
man rather than from any effect it may have 
in changing the divine mind or purpose. There 
is a sublime beauty and holiness about an 
onmoving order of life and nature which is 
of incalculable benefit to man in his moral 
and spiritual aspirations. To this end modern 
science, in spite of all its crude materialisms 
and over-weening assumptions, has made such 
contribution that the religious man should 
every day fall upon his knees and give thanks 
for the growing light of scientific knowledge. 
It will not and cannot eventually be found 
hostile to faith. Any truth wherever we find 
it is God’s truth, and no man can at heart be 
religious who does not desire that the truth 
shall prevail at any cost to any of his pre- 
conceived theories or beliefs. 


To BRING THE TRUE ADJUSTMENT OF Man 
TO THE DIvINE ORDER 


Obviously, if this is God’s world, then the 
prime effect of prayer is to bring the proper 
adjustment of the individual to the divine 
order. The orderly uniformity and ongoing 


140 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of the world is as divine as any unforeseen 
results. Upon this uniformity, life and the 
general well-being are dependent. Prayer can- 
not, then, be considered an interruption of 
that order. It is more important that prayer 
should conform us to God’s will than that it 
should conform God to our wills. If prayer 
were a conforming of God to our desires, as 
a host of people assume, prayer would be a 
far more dangerous exercise than aviation is 
at the present time, for it would endanger 
not only the individual who prayed, but it 
would set up the caprice of the short-sighted, 
ignorant but devout religious man as a sort 
of hierarch over God. In such a case God 
could only obey. Such is of course a reversion 
of the true nature of prayer, but the concep- 
tion of it is very prevalent. i 

By prayer the individual does, then, seek 
to know the supreme will concerning him. 
Through it he clears the fountain springs of 
his own motives of that selfishness which biases 
opinion and leads away from true insight into 
the meaning of life and of social relations. 
It is a calling in of the Divine Spirit for review 
upon one’s life, one’s motives and ambitions. 
Without its clarifying power life never can be 
lived greatly. Prayer is the sine qua non of 
true adjustment to the facts and forces about 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 141 


us, to the divine will and order, and it is 
essential to all religious living. This thought 
leads naturally to a second element in prayer, 
namely, that it is a form of cooperation of the 
individual with the Divine. 


To Put tHe INDIVIDUAL IN COOPERATION 
witH Gop 


We frequently forget that prayer is a form 
of cooperation. Too often it becomes a plead- 
ing for God to do for us what we lack the 
energy, the courage, or the initiative to do 
for ourselves. Sometimes men have prayed 
for a revival of religion in their community 
who have missed entirely the thought of the 
cooperative nature of prayer. If they had 
not, they would have first brought their own 
lives above reproach by the fulfilling of their 
own obligations, justice, kindness, love, and 
truth to their neighbors. In the next place, 
if the matter had really entered vitally into 
their wills, they would have responded to the 
call frankly and courageously to seek those 
same neighbors for discipleship. The great 
value of the closet prayer is to bring about 
such a state of mind that the man who prays 
is ready to cooperate with God, for God desires 
infinitely more than any man can to see the 
salvation of any community and is only await- 


142 THE REASON IN FAITH 


ing the cooperation of his own children. There 
is little use, then, in merely beseeching God 
to do what he already wants to do but in 
the way of which stand our laziness, our 
cowardice, our indifference, and our sin. Real 
prayer will soon set us to cooperating by every 
means In our power. We shall move out to 
answer our own prayer by fulfilling our part 
of the bargain, and we have the assurance if 
that prayer is an expression of what God 
wants too, all the powers of the universe are 
at our disposal to bring the desired result, 
remembering only this, that God never makes 
infractions upon the wills of men. Inviolability 
of the human will carries within its precious 
keeping the reality of moral character. Neither 
is the cooperation one-sided. For the oneness 
with the divine will which prayer brings about 
opens new avenues of possible efficiency and 
vision. Praying is analogous to making elec- 
trical connection with power. The dynamo 
will not turn until the connection is made. 
The cooperation with God through prayer may 
truly be looked upon as an opening of the 
avenues of power. 


To AccoMPLISH THE Enp Soucurt 


The third purpose in prayer is the accom- 
plishment of the end sought. It is clear that 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 143 


the prayer which is in keeping with the divine 
will and which does not involve infraction of 
free wills cannot remain unanswered. It may 
not be answered as the man wanted when he 
began to pray. It must be answered to the 
extent that the man makes God’s will his own 
will in the matter. We are all of us very 
limited in our knowledge and insight and know 
not how to pray or what to ask for as we 
ought. No man has lived a score of years 
religiously who has not been more grateful 
for the lack of definite answer to certain 
prayers than for those which have been ful- 
filled. This is the reasonableness of the saving 
proviso, in all prayer, ““Not my will but thine 
be done.” Very often the best answer to 
our prayer lies in the denial of that which for 
the moment seems to us most necessary. The 
answer to prayer does not, then, depend upon 
receiving the thing asked for. Very often the 
answer comes in achieving a mind which 
voluntarily foregoes the desired object. Prayer 
as a selfish getting of some bauble for me 
by denying it to my neighbor partakes more 
of pious mendicancy than of religion. It is 
not religious and therefore is not prayer. 
It is credulous beggary. But if one’s heart 
be bent upon the achievement of the divine 
will, though that end reach out far past the 


144 THE REASON IN FAITH 


limits of his own toil, struggle and life itself 
it must eventually come to pass, for ali the 
higher forces of the universe work to bring it 
to pass. Our real prayers are like ships we 
put to sea, which wander wide by many havens, 
which, though they circle the wide earth 
again and again, must find their way at last 
to port. Blessed is the man who desires as 
God desires, for he shall have many ships on 
God’s wide seas, and none of them shall be 
lost. mi 


PRAYER AS A SoURCE OF PowER 


So many phases of the subject have already 
been covered that prayer as a source of power 
has already been indicated and needs in this 
place but a few additional words. 

We have seen how prayer is really a putting 
of man into harmony with the will of God. 
It places him in a spirit of cooperation with 
God to bring about that thing which God 
wants. There are many motives that control 
our activities in life. There is the desire for 
praise, or fortune or fame, the desire of the 
flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride 
of life. Some of these are legitimate if they 
are incidental to the greater and supreme 
desire to glorify God and to establish his king- 
dom on the earth. In these desires which 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 145 


range from a mild form of individualism to 
the grossest and most damnable selfishness 
there runs a streak of discontent and disgust, 
because in them the man is not realizing his 
full nature. We cannot leave out the nobler 
side of man’s effort and have anything in the 
end but disillusionment, unhappiness, and dis- 
_ satisfaction. We lie too often upon the sur- 
face of things with no deep-lying principle 
to sustain us. Like restless babes we are 
quieted only with immediate satisfaction. The 
withdrawal of riches, or the satisfaction of 
lust, the vanishing of a single dream leaves 
the man broken with the object of life gone. 

There is here no means of permanent satis- 
faction, no noble self-realization. One must 
somehow anchor himself in the nature of 
things which is God. He must give himself 
to causes that are eternal, to satisfactions 
that cannot die, to expressions that are as 
true for one age as another, or at the very 
least to heroisms that stand forth in undying 
splendor. Often such achievement is possi- 
ble to the man only after time and sense have 
robbed him of the trivial and the fading. 
Such was Dante when his ambitious dreams 
vanished into the darkness of the political 
nightmare of his time and he found his peace 
in the undying truth of his Divine Comedy. 


146 THE REASON IN FAITH 


Only he can find highest expression of himself 
who works without fear of time or fate or 
man or devil, laying one by one the stones 
in the great foundation of truth which by 
their sincerity are beyond cavil, set for all 
the world to see, to criticize, to condemn for 
a time, but eventually to recognize and adore. 

To work thus in the absence of praise and 
against the sharp-running tides of unpopu- 
larity and misunderstanding is impossible un- 
less the man has come to some deep under- 
standing with God, or, if you prefer it, with 
truth or with the nature of things. When we 
put ourselves in tune within the divine order, 
there spring new sources of power which over- 
come every obstacle, even death itself. Such 
a man has the force of the universe at his 
back. It is a literal truth that the stars in 
their courses fight for him. Because his will 
is the will of God he cannot be defeated. 
Such an one can ask what he will and it shall 
be done unto him because he wills what God 
has already willed through him. 


PRAYER AND THE Divinr CHARACTER 


Prayer is the particular need of our own 
age with its pressing and colossal problems 
which only they shall have power to solve 
who keep close to the sources of power. 


PRAYER AND WORLD-ORDER 147 


No thoughtful reader has come thus far 
without realization of how one’s conception of 
prayer involves the conception of the divine 
character. 

The false conception of prayer, which, under 
garb of pious phrase, looks upon it as the 
_ cajoling of a divine Despot, an unwilling 
Deity, into some form of favoritism to those 
who live decently and after the forms of reli- 
gion is really a travesty upon God’s character. 
Furthermore, it makes for unbelief and forms 
a stumbling-block in the way of the reverently 
thoughtful. God must be faithful to the un- 
just as well as to the just if he is to preserve 
his character. He cannot be a respecter of 
persons. He is only a respecter of human 
needs. I cannot pray down the rain upon 
my corn that will destroy my neighbor’s barley, 
nor pray the far job into my possession that 
will mean distress and want for my neighbor 
who needs it more than I. Really religious 
men cannot pray in that way. Unless our 
prayers are social and include the general 
good, they cannot in the strict sense be consid- 
ered prayers at all; they are the expressions of 
selfish wishes. And though our way to this 
high truth lie through the blinding tears of 
self-denial, it is the only trail which leads 
out to the highways of God—who loves all his 


148 THE REASON IN FAITH 


children with an unchanging and equal love. 
If through our blindness we could see this, 
we should know that through this divine 
impartiality alone is the possibility of our 
salvation. The highest pathway for man lies 
along the steep ascent of reconciliation with 


God. 


CHAPTER VII 
SIN, PUNISHMENT, AND PERSONALITY 


In considering the problem of sin it is first 
of all necessary to reach definite principles 
widely applicable, because the notion of sin 
varies with the outlook, habits, early train- 
ing, and conscience of the individual. We 
must look past these variations to the under- 
lying principle. We can do no better in such 
a case than to have resort to the teachings 
of Jesus, who had such principles, though he 
frequently ran counter to the common notions 
of sin in his own day. His action on the 
Sabbath was set forth as sinful; some of his 
sayings regarding God were considered im- 
pious. He seemed quite indifferent to the set 
rules of his time in which religious conduct 
had become stereotyped. He frequently ex- 
posed the irreligion which lay underneath a 
slavish obedience to the religious rules. What 
his principle was is indicated in his perfect 
law—love to God, to neighbor, and to self. 
Sin would be that which would offend in any 


one of these three respects, and these will 
149 


150 THE REASON IN FAITH 


form the basis of our consideration and 
definition. | | : 

Sin may be defined as an offense toward 
God, neighbor, or self. Since such a defini- 
tion is sure to seem vague, let us study it a 
little more closely. It is quite certain that 
it will not please the literalist who wants his 
sin named and catalogued and is impatient 
with the application of principles which must 
be used more or less differently in different 
cases. Such an one is likely to look upon 
such application of principles as a sort of 
moral obliquity. Exactly such was the charge 
against Jesus, and we should not allow it 
too great an importance. 


Sin A FaInuRE To CooPpERATE witH Gop 


There is no doubt that Jesus had in mind 
the definition of sin as rebellion against God’s 
will, though he had little or nothing to say 
regarding the divine wrath against it. His 
doctrine of sin sprang out of a sense of the 
value of human life and the intrinsic worth 
of the human soul rather than from that sense, 
which has been at times so prominent with 
the theologians, of the absolute holiness and 
abstract justice of God. Jesus did not discuss 
sin in the abstract, but always as a fact of 
experience, and he lays no particular stress 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 151 


upon the wrath of an injured God as a factor 
in the problem. 

From the aspect of sin against God we 
have most prominently the parable of the 
king’s wedding. To this invitations were 
issued only to be insolently disregarded by 
men who were too busy with material things 
to accept. The result for them is that a whole 
horde of men whom they consider socially 
unfit receive the honor of sitting down at the 
marriage of the king’s son. Among those 
that come is one who is apparently bound to 
come on his own terms. He refuses to wear 
the wedding garment. He is, of course, con- 
spicuous and out of place, the blot upon other- 
wise perfect arrangements and a perfect feast. 
His only natural place is the outer darkness. 
He does not belong. 

The sin of the foolish virgins was the neglect 
of preparation for that usefulness which made 
their presence desirable at the wedding. They 
were come in the capacity of light-bearers 
to welcome the home-bringing of the bride. 
With no oil in their lamps and no welcome 
when the bridegroom came, there was simply 
no reason for their admission to the feast. 
The chief object of admission was not that 
they might have the pleasure of witnessing the 
spectacle, but that they might add to the joy. 


152 THE REASON IN FAITH 


The wicked husbandmen sinned by misusing 
a heritage with whose safe-keeping and 
development they are only intrusted. They 
forget their duties as stewards and begin by 
converting these means to their own uses. 
The killmg of the rightful heir naturally 
follows. The moral is that men who thus 
misuse their stewardship open the way to the 
most desperate hatred of God which prevents 
them from having any part in the Eternal 
Kingdom. | 

One particular thread will be seen running 
through this group of parables. It is the 
failure of the individual sinner to adapt him- 
self to the divine will and order. That refusal 
to adapt himself prevents him from becoming 
a partaker in that order. This phase of truth 
is ever in need of emphasis and never more 
than in our own time, for there is an 
unchangeable divine order—a universe to which 
the wise man adapts himself. If he works in 
unison with natural law, by so much he works 
in unison with God and has God working with 
him. He cannot break the laws of that uni- 
verse without reading himself out of its benefits. 
If the transgressed laws of health slay him or 
the transgressed law of gravitation break him 
in pieces, or the cold freeze him or the fire 
burn him, there is no special intervention or 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 153 


suspension of laws which he knew were existent 
and against which he should have provided. 
This is so because the lives of great multitudes 
depend upon this uniformity. It may seem 
sternness to some, but it is unflinching stern- 
ness for the common welfare which is of vastly 
more moment than that of any individual. 
To be kind to the race God must be stern with 
the individual. Many of our social, political, 
and judicial institutions are attempting to 
reverse that law at this time. We are so merci- 
ful toward the wrongdoer that we often forget 
we have any obligation to the innocent vic- 
tims or to the welfare of society in general. 
God never forgets. Science repeats the same 
stern tale of atrophied powers where there is 
refusal to enter upon the use of those powers. 
It is as if in these talents God were offering 
us kingdoms contingent upon our taking them. 
If they are offered and we refuse to enter into 
them, the responsibility is ours and not God’s. 
He, then, who sets himself up against the 
divine order in the natural world or in the 
spiritual world has all the force of the eternal 
energy opposed to him. He wages an im- 
possible conflict which means for him the loss 
of powers, of opportunity, and in the end of 
personality itself. The force of the universe 
would like a falling millstone grind him to 


154 THE REASON IN FAITH 


powder. This irrepressible power was the 
wrath of God upon the children of disobedi- 
ence, although Jesus never ‘chose to state it 
in that way. | 


A DwaRFING oF PERSONALITY 


But Jesus was forever viewing sin as a 
dwarfing of personality. Foremost was its 
effect upon the personality of the sinner. It 
was that which hinders or deforms person- 
ality. One could never be quite the man 
after he had sinned that he had been before. 
The nature of sin was dwarfing and warping. 
It dulls the insight, blinds the vision, poisons 
the fountains of life at their source, and in 
the end perverts the personality from the 
image of God so that the sinner is no longer 
capable of seeing truly or of communion with 
God. Of this type of sin Jesus speaks in three 
typical parables—the parables of the prod- 
igal, the rich fool, and the house on the sand. 
In the first the wanderer reduces himself to 
a state of beggary by his disgusting ingrati- 
tude and willfulness, but, seeing his wrong, 
he returns belated to the love of his father’s 
house. The teaching of the parable is that 
the greater loss falls to the mean-spirited 
brother, who shuts himself away from the 
father’s love and joy, because of a petty, 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 155 


jealous, and unforgiving spirit. The sin of 
the rich fool lies in his willingness to be satis- 
fied with the lesser rather than the greater 
gifts of life. The very night that he decided 
to be happy with a full barn and a fat pocket- 
book, all that was noblest and all that was 
intrinsically valuable about him glimmered 
' out, the light that failed. The man who built 
his house upon the sand was likewise trusting 
to satisfactions that could not withstand the 
blasts of life. Having no eternal foundations, 
all his hopes were swept away. 


AN OFFENSE AGAINST THE PERSONALITY 
oF OTHERS 


Finally Jesus defined sin as an offense against 
the personality of others. This phase of the 
subject he touched with a delicacy which has 
been seldom comprehended. In our unthink- 
ing. rudeness we blunder into places which 
Jesus always approached with reverence. Per- 
sonality was to him a sacred thing upon which 
even God would not intrude unannounced and 
uninvited. “Behold, I stand at the door, and 
knock: if any man will open unto me, I will 
come in and sup with him.” In this shekinah 
of the human soul was the last citadel of 
goodness. Broken down, invaded, or destroyed, 
life could never be the same again. Probably 


156 THE REASON IN FAITH 


the most cruel and terrible words we could 
utter to any man would be, “I have lost all 
respect for you.” That must lie at the heart 
of Jesus’ warning that he who calls his brother 
a cursed fool is in danger of hell-fire. Once 
the delicacy of that self-respect is destroyed 
—soul substance is destroyed—and the way 
back is difficult and all but impossible. He 
who respects his fellow men, expecting the 
meanest and weakest of them to show forth 
a true manhood, unconsciously passes through 
society with a lifting and saving power. Even 
the adulterous woman was not burdened with 
the further consciousness of the Master’s dis- 
respect. He met her as upon the same plane 
of respect with himself. His inherent respect 
for her personality was her salvation. | 
The parables which have to do with sin 
against others are typically represented in 
Dives and Lazarus and the last judgment. 
Dives’ sin consisted of indifference to the 
plain laws of humanity. So set was he upon 
the pleasures of his own worldly life that he 
missed the finer treasure of human companion- 
ship and charity. When, stripped of the first, 
he sought the second, he found that there was 
no common language of approach or sympathy. 
There was an impassable gulf which he had 
made. In the parable of the sheep and the 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 157 


goats, the literal-minded desire to know when- 
ever they saw Him hungry or athirst or poor 
or sick or in prison, and did not minister unto 
him. These sadly learn the solidarity of life 
by being told that inasmuch as they did it 
not to one of the least of these whom he con- 
sidered brethren, they did it not to him. 


THe MEANING oF UNPARDONABLE SIN 


It would not do, perhaps, to close this dis- 
cussion without reference to Jesus’ teaching 
regarding unpardonable sin. Not because of 
the importance which it assumes directly, but 
because the fact of unpardonable sin has been 
the bludgeon of the crank and the horror of 
the sensitive. 

One might infer from the common idea of 
unpardonable sin that God is himself crotchety, 
quick-tempered and unreasonable, glad to catch 
man at a disadvantage and to visit on him 
the direct punishment for an unpremeditated 
and thoughtless offense, from which there is 
no escape even upon repentance. But we 
cannot take the character of God in the large, 
as Jesus represented it, and think for one 
moment that the human soul can ever reach 
the place where it is not surrounded by the 
Eternal Love, nor that to any soul at any 
time coming with that repentance which means 


158 THE REASON IN FAITH 


a new purpose and new life, the divine for- 
giveness would be denied. We must think 
that sin becomes unpardonable only because 
forgiveness is not sought, because the indi- 
vidual has grown so blind to moral and spir- 
itual distinctions that evil has become its 
good. The unpardonable sin is nearer to us 
than we think and of different order than 
many think. Recall the connection in which 
Jesus used those words. It was when. his 
works of love and mercy were being ascribed 
to devilish motives. He was calling attention 
to the attitude of life into which his accusers 
had fallen. They had run gladly to convince 
themselves of a lie. Even the power of God 
manifested in one whom they hated was lightly 
accredited to demonic possession. Have you 
ever pondered on that miserable sin of jeal- 
ousy which led you to attribute evil motives 
to every good that your enemy might do? 
So far as that one man was concerned, your 
whole outlook on life was changed. It cen- 
tered in your self-pity and vanity. His light, 
whatever it might be, was darkness to you, 
his good would not be admitted, there must 
at least be an evil motive lurking behind. 
That is how hate poisons the springs of one’s 
being. So men, under the excuse of self-pity, 
af self-conceit, or vanity, come to the point 


Es _. 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 159 


where they cannot apprehend the truth. Dark- 
ness appears as light and light as darkness. 
This is the attitude of life that brings us be- 
yond the reach of reconciliation either with 
man or with God. That life can be only black- 
ness which raises over its head the banner 
of hate. 


PUNISHMENT INHERENT IN PERSONALITY 


In discussing the teachings of Jesus it is 
always desirable to remember the symbolical 
nature of all language used to describe spir- 
itual experiences and spiritual truths. This is 
due to the poverty of language, and the nature 
of the deepest experiences of the soul. We 
cannot describe the simplest spiritual expe- 
riences except in metaphorical terms, hoping 
that those who hear may construct a content 
similar to our own, and get from our expres- 
sion meanings deeper than words. The blind 
literalist never understands anything in the 
spiritual world and never accomplishes any- 
thing except heresy trials. The heart of 
religious teaching forever escapes him. 

This principle is useful in considering Jesus’ 
doctrine of future punishment, to keep us 
from a literalism that shall turn aside the 
deeper facts of the truth he uttered. He used 
the formulas and the ideas that were com- 


160 THE REASON IN FAITH 


mon to his day. How true this is will become 
clear to anyone who will take the pains to 
consult the apocryphal writings current among 
the Jews of Jesus’ day, and especially the 
Ethiopie and Slavonic books of Enoch. Jesus 
was compelled to speak his message in the 
language and forms of expression and to use 
the prevailing ideas of his age. Moreover, he 
confined himself to no single form of expres- 
sion, and about this fact the literalists have 
swarmed like bees, each gathering his own 
particular kind of theological honey. 

We shall not understand deeply the teach- 
ings of the Master regarding punishment if 
we do not remember that it is based upon the 
inherent capacities of the personality. The 
damnation about which Jesus was most con- 
cerned was one of character, and not delayed 
until the future life. To say that men were 
to burn in a lake of fire was at best a figure 
of speech used to indicate to common minds 
the serious nature of the loss of a soul. But 
to lose the soul meant much more than any 
such figure of speech could convey. It meant, 
as in the parable of the tares,! separation from 
the good and true. A similar meaning is 
connoted in the parable of the dragnet.” It 


1 Matt. 13. 24. 
2 Matt. 13. 47. 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 161 


meant the uprooting of all not planted by the 
Eternal Father.? It meant the cutting down 
of the fruitless tree. It meant a recurring 
consciousness of sonship, and yet of irrec- 
oncilable separation, as in the case of Dives, 
to whom in hell are addressed the words of 
sorrowing tenderness, “Son, remember.” It 
- meant to be denied by the Lord when he 
should come in his glory. To lose the soul 
meant to be shut out from the loving fellow- 
ship of the King, to lose the estate of incom- 
parable worth, the secret treasure, the pearl 
of great price. 

But the climax of sadness must come in the 
fact that the damnation is self-wrought by the 
individual in the face of a love that has done 
all that it could to save him. These outward 
recognitions are only external marks ‘of a 
damnation already proceeding, for example, 
the loss of one’s character. If hell-fire arbi- 
trarily administered is the whole of the story, 
as many have thought, a mechanical doctrine 
of atonement may enable one to think that a 
death-bed repentance, the absolution of a 
priest, or a prayer of last hope, may be suffi- 
cient to present the soul without loss in 
eternal bliss. But such a view is trivial and 


§ Matt. 13. 15. 
$ Matt. 7. 23, 10. 33, 25. 12; Luke 13. 25-27, 


162 THE REASON IN FAITH 


false in the face of the deeper teachings of 
Jesus regarding the effect of sin upon character. 
The greatest punishment, ‘after all, that can 
be meted out to the sinner, is just to be what 
he has made himself, and the greatest reward 
of the saint is likewise to be what he has be- 
come through the power of God, redeemed 
from sin. Golden streets and eternal rest and 
song have little to add to the man who has 
come up out of great tribulation by the pres- 
ence and conscious help of the eternal God, 
having washed his robes and made them 
_ white in the blood of sacrificial living. 


Tur Turee Laws or CHARACTER 


The teachings of Jesus on the retribution 
of character may for convenience be grouped 
under three heads, which we may designate 
as laws of character. They are, first, the law 
of inevitable harvest, with its negative, the 
law of unused possession; second, the law of 
spiritual reaction; and, third, the law of spir- 
itual relapse. 

We have already touched upon the mean- 
ing of the parable of the wise and foolish vir- 
gins. Admittance to the marriage is refused 
the foolish virgins simply on the ground that 
they have nothing to bring there of light or 
joy. We have too often sought heaven for 


SIN AND PERSONALITY ~ 163 


what we expect to get out of it. The teaching 
of this parable is that unless we have some- 
thing to add to its light and song, some sheaves 
to bring, some deathless treasures of the 
human spirit, some contribution to the eternal 
glory, there will be no reason for our entering 
there. What of us that live along for years 
without adding a single treasure of the human 
soul, without bringing gladness and joy and 
salvation to any in our neighborhood, and have 
brought back to the Father’s house no single 
prodigal from his far wandering? Some of us 
cannot decorate even the earth. How can we 
hope to be of use to heaven? It is true that 
the doors are open upon east and west and 
north and south and shall not be shut by 
day, but even the kings of the earth enter 
there because they have some glory and honor 
of the real kind to bring into it. 

If there is no fruit, there is no future for 
the tree. The purposes of a tree are all missed 
if it bears no fruit. There is nothing to do 
but to cut it down. “Why cumbereth it the 
ground?” If a human soul find not itself nor 
its fruitage, who can give it a soul or save it 
from itself? There are certain storms before 
whose flood all sands will melt away. Who 
can save the house of the man who has had 
no more sense than to build deep into the 


164 THE REASON IN FAITH 


sand? If a man be a servant and faithfully 
employs his talent, there is a law of increasing 
success to help him on.’ Nothing succeeds 
like success—talents multiply to kingdoms. 
But if a servant is so unmindful of his duty 
as to bury his talent, again the inevitable 
harvest, “Cast the unprofitable servant into 
outer darkness.” 

The negative side of the law of inevitable 
harvest is the law of unused possessions. 
Nature has written this law of atrophy of 
powers all over creation. She has proclaimed 
it from every scarped cliff, from every bury- 
ing ground of uncouth monsters of an age 
gone by. “Take from him that which he 
seemeth to have, and deliver it to him that 
hath ten talents.” Aye, that which he seem- 
eth to have. Napkin talents are had only in 
the seeming. Wealth is a reality only in use. 
Education is valuable only in the imparting. 
Religion there is none apart from the living. 
The unused possession is an unreality that 
only deceives. The miser hoards his gold at 
the expense of what the gold might give him. 
The rich fool instead of expanding life with 
expanding barns would narrow it to the size 
of the barns, and that night his soul, the only 
source of deeper joys, died within him. O 
thou Capernaum, thou Bethsaida, companions 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 165 


of the manifold mystery, because there is in 
thee no vision to discover thy God when he 
comes to thee, thou art to go down to the 
eternal blindness. 

Dives had built a world of food and drink 
and gorgeous apparel, as if food and drink 
and gorgeous apparel would last always. All 
these things in which his heart had trusted 
for joy slipped out in a night and were not. 
One anchor of the soul there might have been. 
He might at least have had fellowship with the 
beggar at the gate. That privilege which in 
life he had despised became his prayer in 
hell. Mayhap Lazarus would have been glad 
to minister, but how shall they communicate 
who speak a different language? What could 
Lazarus of the doorstep say in sympathy 
that would not add tortures to Dives of the 
marble hall? There was a great gulf fixed in 
death as Dives had made it in life. 

Then there is the law of spiritual reaction. 
A truly repentant man will not be unforgiving. 
Strange, sad truth it is, that as I am lax with 
myself I am hard with the sins of my fellows, 
and as J am stern with my own shortcomings 
I am forgiving toward theirs. The debtor who 
was forgiven much refused to forgive little 
and displayed a character so out of keeping 
with his Lord that there was nothing that 


166 THE REASON IN FAITH 


could touch his hardened soul but bending 
on the rack until the last farthing was paid, 
Last of all, there was the law of spiritual 
relapse, or the law of the unfilled vacuum. 
A purged soul with no task is simply a vacuum 
into which anything may enter. It is a type 
of the Christian with no real work for the 
Kingdom, a church member with no religious 
toil, with no church to support, no community 
to save. It cannot long remain in that state; 
it must either get at a positive program or 
become the abode of seven demons worse than 
the first. The harvest of character—this is 
the punishment which we carry with us wher- 
ever we go, the hell that we are making for 
ourselves. In this the saddest and bitterest 
touch of remorse must come when self-decep- 
tion is no longer possible from the conscious- 
ness that we are enfolded by a pleading and 
untiring love. What is more distasteful than 
a love unreciprocated and unsought? When 
that love is the Eternal himself who can 
flee from his presence? Though I take the 
wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter- 
most parts of the earth, though I say the 
darkness shall hide me, though I make my 
bed in hell, lo, he is there. In such a case I 
might well call upon the rocks and the moun- 
tains to hide me from his presence. His con- 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 167 


sciousness is so bound up with my personality 
that I may be sure of this whatever else I 
may doubt, wherever my personality survives, 
there will his presence be for joy or for pain. 


INTENSIFICATION OF PUNISHMENT THROUGH 
VANISHING OF TEMPORAL AND 
SPATIAL ORDER 


In human experience there is nothing so 
delicate, nothing so intimately connected with 
happiness or sanity as the inner personality 
of which we have been speaking. Confirm 
and strengthen it, and the outward life responds 
with strength as the flower responds to the 
sun. Weaken or break it down, and there is 
immediate effect in the outward self. It is 
as if the soul could never forget. One can 
fill the hours with ulterior interests and excite- 
ments and momentarily forget the deeper 
existence, but in the end wrongs done to the 
personality stalk like specters through the 
background and are waiting only their chance 
to occupy the foreground. In the watches of 
the night, after the first deep sleep has passed, 
in moments of mental leisure they come to 
fill the stage of the mind. There are flashes 
from forgotten days of childhood, unremem- 
bered for years, memories which long inhibited 
we had supposed forgotten, but in some mo- 


168 THE REASON IN FAITH 


ment when least we wish to see them they 
appear. Some of the psychologists call these 
manifestations of the subconscious mind, a 
term more or less misleading and inaccurate. 
The fact that the memories have to do with 
injury to the personality has led Freud and 
the psychoanalysts to jump to the conclusion 
that all are founded on sex repressions. It 
is only because sex experience is so intimately 
bound up with personality. A man may dis- 
pense with much in this life; he cannot afford 
to dispense with respect for himself. So long 
as he keeps the citadel of his own heart he 
can face the world with power. The con- 
sciousness of weakness or surrender here is 
followed with inevitable internal conflict and 
disaster because the very center is attacked 
from which are the issues of life. We can 
bear anything but shame. And shame bites 
deepest when internal shame witnesses to the 
external. Stevenson in the Christmas Sermon 
called attention to the necessity of having 
friends, yet without capitulation and “above 
all, on the same grim condition to keep friends 
with oneself.” The heart of future punishment 
lies perhaps in this, the failure to be on good 
terms with oneself. It is the fertile source 
of split personality, and all manner of psy- 
choneuroses, and many insanities where the 


SIN AND PERSONALITY 169 


individual through some shock to the per- 
sonality loses his own self-control. A study of 
these instances is likely to lead one to the 
conclusion that they are, many of them, shocks 
that touch the inner spirit of personality or 
self-respect. May it not be possible, then. 
that when the human personality through the 
' passing from the spatial and temporal order 
is no longer able to occupy itself with super- 
ficial interests, the punishment for sin will 
be just this incompatibility with oneself and 
with the divine order by which one is sur- 
rounded? 

Dante has represented one song as filling 
all the spaces of eternity. It is the subject of 
the heavenly choirs in their wheeling flight 
about the throne—it forms a chorus of cheer 
to the wearied pilgrims who in hope struggle 
up the dark circles of the mount of purgatory. 
It is also heard in hell. Everywhere the burden 
of the song is love, “Amore! Amore! Amore!” 
That which creates the rapture of heaven and 
sustains the pilgrims of purgatory is the deep- 
est punishment of the wicked and ungrateful. 
And the tragedy of their situation lies in this, 
that so long have they wronged the deeper 
demands of their own personalities that they 
have come to hate their better selves. They 
find themselves with divided personalities, but 


170 THE REASON IN FAITH 


incapable of longer willing the good. So far 
as they can be said to desire anything, it is 
only evil. So they live forever in a universe 
with which they are at hopeless war.. They 
are surrounded by the presence and conscious- 
ness of God which they hate and cannot escape. 
Happy would their lot be if, indeed, they 
could compel the rocks and the mountains to 
fall upon them and hide them from the face 
of the Almighty. But they cannot escape 
his universe and they will not reconcile nor 
adapt themselves to it. Their punishment is 
just to be themselves with what they have 
made themselves, but at war with all their 
surroundings. Such a hell begins in the human 
personality with the first sin, and if there be 
no repentance, it can only be accentuated by 
the passage of time and only deepened with 
the vanishing of the temporal order when our 
sins stand out before us as an eternal now. 

Is such a viewpoint of sin and punishment 
not sufficiently definite?- Are principles like 
these more adequate than a catalogue of sins? 
To some it will so seem, and there will be 
much to bear them out in the speech and 
attitude of the Great Teacher. To the think- 
ing mind in our modern age they are likely to 
drive home the old teachings with a new and 
compelling force. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE CHARACTER OF WORLD 
REDEMPTION 


Brnepetto Crocs, in his Theory and Prac- 
tice of History, points out the long conflict 
between contrasting world views which has 
determined philosophy and historiography from 
the beginning. It is the conflict between the 
ideas of immanence and transcendence. Im- 
manence is developmental, though in being so 
it never escapes the necessity for transcendence. 
Its tendencies are naturalistic, not to say 
fatalistic. It looks on the origin of the world 
and the progress of civilization as a natural 
development. It refuses to become excited 
over things as they are, looking upon the 
whole process of life and at history from the 
standpoint of growth. The natural and the 
supernatural are one. The transcendental 
view is sharply dualistic. The creative process 
proceeds from a will which is at direct con- 
trast with the world it creates. Emphasis is 
placed on the natural as over against the 
supernatural. The fact of human freedom is 


dwelt upon, as over against the fatalism in- 
171 


172 THE REASON IN FAITH 


volved in the usual notions of immanence. 
But the redemptive value and implications of 
human freedom are lost from sight. Its 
dualism is, however, too complete. It assumes 
a Creator who is no part of present life and 
finds itself driven into a wilderness of explanation 
which satisfies neither its opponents nor itself. 

It is not, then, strange that contrasting 
attitudes which have so profoundly affected 
the history of secular thought should like- 
wise have affected theological thought regarding 
the goal of history, the character of world 
redemption. We shall discover the two types 
here—the immanently developmental, natural- 
istic and positive, and the transcendental 
dualistic, cataclysmic and negative. The two 
views form the crux of present theologico- 
scientific discussion. Both are partly right, 
partly wrong, and peace can be had only in 
the discovery of the nexus of compromise. 
Immanence and transcendence are not mu- 
tually exclusive terms. Both immanence and 
transcendence are present in personality and in 
all creative life. A wider understanding will 
eventually show the necessity for both ideas. 
Let us, then, without further preliminary, 
reverse our order and consider first the tran- 
scendental view, which is cataclysmic and 
negative. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 173 


Tur TRANSCENDENTAL, CATACLYSMIC, OR 
NEGATIVE VIEW 


Perhaps the most resented adjective in this 
description will be the last one, but it springs 
directly from the positing of a dualism so 
complete that in effect it rules God out of the 
natural order and gives him participation only 
‘in the supernatural. In the beginning this 
move was made to safeguard the reality of 
human freedom and remove from the Divine 
the responsibility for evil. However good the 
intention, the result has not been satisfactory 
either for the maintenance of a real human 
freedom or for clearing the divine character 
of complicity in an evil world-order. The 
knot remains untied until we discover the 
mutual compatibility of immanence and tran- 
scendence. 


Ture TRANSCENDENTAL VIEW IN CONFLICT 
Wits THe Orpier or NATURE AND LIFE 


The first result, then, of this unsynthesized 
dualism—for a synthesized dualism must be 
maintained—has been to raise a conflict with 
the order of nature and of life. Nature is held 
to be somewhat base, that from which the 
soul must struggle to escape. Natural ten- 
dencies are always wrong tendencies, and the 
way of salvation is a battle against nature. 


174 THE REASON IN FAITH 


God is not only a Being transcending the 
natural order which he has created, but so 
holy withal that he has come to despise it 
and seeks by what means he can to save from 
it such as are of his own way of thinking. 
Such an attitude can but create distrust in all 
natural methods and in the value of scien- 
tific research. It resents any thought of 
development except the development of iniquity 
and finds itself in immediate conflict with 
all evolutionary theory. For God to act through 
natural forces would be to remove all super- 
natural or transcendent reality. When the 
facts of science refute its positions, its tendency 
is one of despising the facts and fleeing for 
refuge to the realm of mysticism and magic. 
Its world can be redeemed only by destruction, 
and salvation can come only by bloodshed. 


Wirs tHE Fact or PERSONALITY 


Not only is this view in conflict with the 
order of nature and of life, but it is likewise 
in conflict with the fact of personality. The 
foundation stone of personality is freedom, 
the power of choice and self-direction, and 
the resulting value in character. Apparently, 
the possession of freedom by his creatures is 
so dear to God that he will not transgress it 
even to impose his will. He stands at the 


WORLD REDEMPTION 175 


door and knocks, but it is for man to open 
the door ere he will enter. And this is in 
line with the best we can know of life, philos- 
ophy, and psychology. One cannot be 
frightened, bludgeoned, or scared into moral 
character. Reformation comes not in circum- 
stances but in the moral will. If this remain 
- untouched, or if it move in the direction of 
an outward and formal decency only under 
the spur of fear or the anticipation of selfish 
rewards, its activity springs not from a desire 
for goodness but a desire for future selfish 
bliss, and the moral will remains unchanged. 
Many men who in the human relations have 
learned to esteem lightly the moral value of 
decisions made under compulsions of punish- 
ment or made for selfish gain, apply this method 
to God’s dealings with free men without 
dreaming of its horrible inconsistency and its 
travesty upon religion. Redemption is a 
redemption of the moral will or it is nothing. 
We are saved only when we love goodness 
and not when we hope merely to escape the 
reward of evil. Love of righteousness rather 
than love of the joys of heaven indicates 
whether there has been any moral change 
at heart. 

It is clear, then, that any true redemption 
of the world can come only by cooperation 


176 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of free human personalities and not by any 
compulsion whatever. In the possession of 
the moral will and the divine assistance in 
the order of nature man has all the elements 
from which in cooperation with God to build 
a new heaven and a new earth. The coming 
of this new earth waits only upon his coopera- 
tion with God, and what gain would come of 
compulsion and cataclysm does not appear. 
It lies within man’s own power, acting with 
God, to redeem his world and the order of 
society. Against his will even God is power- 
less, for to remove man’s moral freedom is 
to remove the possibility of his moral char- 
acter and to reduce him to the moral status 
of the beasts of the field. The transcendental 
and cataclysmic view is, then, in its extreme 
and unqualified form in conflict with facts and 
necessities of human personality. It is incon- 
ceivable that having created human personality 
as the climax of creating activity, God should 
proceed to destroy it in order to save it. Such 
is the dilemma of transcendentalism. 


UNETHICAL IN CHARACTER 


The unethical character of such world- 
redemption has already become apparent dur- 
ing the discussion of personality. Free will 


WORLD REDEMPTION 177 


cannot be coerced into goodness. Goodness 
must be its choice in order that there shall be 
either character or ethical value. It surely is 
an anomaly to talk of any kind of redemption 
which does not have the complete cooperation 
of the will of the individual. It does not appear 
how any band of saints caught up into a third 
_ heaven would have any completer field for 
exercise of the moral will than they would in 
the average modern city, where the lust of 
the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the 
pride of life are ever calling but are ever being 
resisted by those whose hearts are right. The 
assumption of such a position is that it is 
impossible to resist sin and that the only 
perfect life is one in which there can be no 
temptation. The physical removal of tempta- 
tion does not bear, however, an ethical qual- 
ity. When the power of temptation has been 
forever swallowed up and lostin the love for 
righteousness and truth, then, and only then, 
is the individual completely redeemed. On no 
other basis can the temptation of Jesus be 
explained as a reality without detriment to 
his moral character. It was not absence of 
temptation but love for and devotion to 
goodness that lifted his life into continual 
moral triumph. 

Any hope to renew the world by fire, blood, 


178 THE REASON IN FAITH 


judgment, and cataclysm rather than by the 
mastery by man of the ethical values is as 
untrue to moral reality as itis vain. - 


CONFLICTINGLY DUALISTIC 


Another element in the transcendental view 
is its unsynthesized dualism. The practical 
removal of God from the natural order sets 
up a contrasting kingdom of evil as powerful 
and as tenacious as the kingdom of good. 
This arises from a failure to distinguish be- 
tween the existence of evil as an act and evil 
as a possibility. This distinction many minds 
refuse to make, and yet it is fundamental in 
its consequences for theology. Temptation to 
evil, though not entered into, is frequently 
treated as if it were evil. Evil is removed 
from wrong moral choices and given an inde- 
pendent existence of its own as if it could 
exist apart from action. When one has the 
temerity to remind the theological dualist of 
this, he is immediately reproached with being 
false to the faith once delivered to the saints, 
as if the eternal and independent existence of 
evil were as necessary to religion as belief in 
God. If evil as an act rather than as a possi- 
bility is eternally necessary, there is no hope 
that righteousness will be eternally triumphant. 





WORLD REDEMPTION 179 


In which case also we must charge God with 
being its author, thus destroying his moral 
character, or else admit that God divides his 
realm with that before which he is powerless. 
If, on the other hand, evil is wrong moral 
choice alone, the day may come when all 
men, having been induced to love and desire 
the good, may do away with evil, though not 
with its possibility, forever. This does not, 
of course, take into account the possibility 
that there are persons whose wills are so com- 
pletely given to evil action that they can 
never be induced to love the good. But even 
for such the destructive effect of wickedness 
upon free moral personality needs to be taken 
into account. 


REVERSES THE DivInrE CHARACTER 


The most disturbing feature of the tran- 
scendental or cataclysmic view of redemption 
is its reversal of the moral plan and character 
of God. To it creation as consummated has to 
be viewed as a colossal divine mistake. Con- 
sequences apparently unforeseen, but springing 
out of the blunder of endowing man with 
freedom and giving the devil a free range, 
have spoiled the original work beyond power 
of recall. The only hope thus left is to burn 


180 THE REASON IN FAITH 


up the present creation root and branch, and 
with such portion of it as has shown hope by 
subscription to dogmatic belief, to start a 
better world with the acquired fund of expe- 
rience arising from the original failure. In 
this new world it must be assumed there can 
be no possibility of evil, and thus only a living 
upon the virtue of the past, that character 
originally acquired in a “‘sin-cursed world.” 
There could be no multiplication of spirits be- 
cause these to exist must have an ethical 
character which is unobtainable except in a 
world where moral choice is a possibility. For 
such a God and such a heaven growth would 
be forever an impossibility and, what the un- 
wary cannot see, by the same law, life itself 
would be forever barred. Abbey in his master- 
piece, “The Search for the Grail,” has given 
us the picture of such a heaven in that of 
King Amfortas, who with his court is destined 
to remain locked in slumber till the coming 
of one whose heart and deeds are of such a 
character as to break the unearthly spell of 
dead enchantment. Life can never take itself 
out in self-contemplation of its own goodness, 
nor redeemed living souls in their own praise. 
Life must ever be creative. “My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work,” said Jesus. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 181 


DEVELOPMENTAL ViEW TOO EASILY 
INDIFFERENT 


The developmental or positive view is open 
to criticism in much the same way as the 
transcendental for its one-sided incomplete- 
ness. It is too often lazssez faire and morally 
' indifferent. Moral redemption being a process 
of development, it is easy for the individual 
to depend upon the world-order to do the 
developing, while he escapes moral respon- 
sibility. If the negative viewpoint fails by 
underemphasizing man’s part in the redemp- 
tion of the world, the positive viewpoint often 
fails by oversight of man’s responsibility. It 
does not yield itself to that pessimism of the 
opposing view which cuts the cords of action, 
but its very hopefulness easily becomes its 
temptation to indifference. In keeping with 
its immanental proclivities it magnifies the 
process, the order, while it minifies the indi- 
vidual. It is grand in conception, but has not 
the spirit to attack evil and force moral issues. 
It should, however, by very reason of its pos- 
itive standpoint and its opposition to the 
cataclysmic view arrive at a saner outlook on 
the inner meaning of redemption. It has open 
to it thus a perspective something like the 
following: 


182 THE REASON IN FAITH 


CAPABLE OF SETTING ForTH THE 
ETHICAL SIDE 


It should realize the necessity in any real 
world redemption of provision for the life of 
the individual. That is to say, it should have 
a broader view of the salvation of the indi- 
vidual than that it is almost wholly mental 
assent to dogma and salvation for a world 
to come. Salvation is begun here or nowhere. 
It is a change in ethical character and achieve- 
ment or it is nothing. It is salvation to whole- 
some and Christlike living rather than to 
future joy. The Christlike order of life does, 
of course, insure the joy, but happiness is 
incidental and a by-product rather than the 
goal of effort. Happiness is always such a 
by-product. It never comes to him who seeks 
it as a goal. It is the reward of moral integ- 
rity and the self-forgetting spirit. Religious 
joy is no exception. Heaven itself would be 
stale for the man who had not won it at great 
cost. Redemption for the individual can include 
nothing less than a redemption of the present 
life to social usefulness and service, to the 
actual pursuit of high ideals, and the spend- 
ing of life on righteous causes. This important 
truth the developmental view is specially fitted 
to emphasize. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 183 


To SHow Wortp REDEMPTION AS A 
CooPERATIVE PROCESS 


The other fact of importance in the redemp- 
tion of the individual which the positive 
viewpoint should make clear is that world 
redemption is in the nature of the case a 
‘cooperative process. It cannot overlook the 
moral will of the individual. Having created 
a world of free individuals, that world cannot 
be redeemed without the cooperation of the 
free wills created. It was doubtless a danger- 
ous and venturesome thing for God to do, as 
seen from our human standpoint, but the fact 
of freedom cannot be doubted without negating 
the whole moral system. It should not be 
deemed a sign of weakness on God’s part that 
he chooses to save the world through the 
cooperation of human wills. The growth of 
human individuals to his own viewpoint must 
afford the highest possible satisfaction to the 
Creator, while it provides the highest possible 
development and satisfaction to man. It is 
not a sign of weakness in a teacher to refuse 
to perform the sums in the pupil’s arithmetic, 
nor for a father to decline to make decisions 
for his child. To cast upon the pupil the 
necessity of struggling out his problem means 
that he shall be strong as his teacher, and to 


184 THE REASON IN FAITH 


throw upon the child the necessity for his 
own decisions means he may be as his father. 
As individuals come to learn the deeper mean- 
ings of life, as they come to see as God sees, 
and to desire those things which he desires, 
they will make their world what he wills. 
When all men have thus come to the spirit 
of cooperation the world will be redeemed. 
This much a real redemption must mean in 
any case, and it can mean nothing less. It 
is a process discouragingly slow for our hasty 
hearts and years that are spent as a watch in 
the night, but it may not seem slow to that 
Mind that has spent uncounted millenniums 
in bringing the process to its present condition 
of achievement. It may seem precarious to the 
cynical disbeliever in human character, the 
man whose faith dwells chiefly on human 
depravity, but not to a loving Mind which 
dwells with infinite joy upon every manifesta- 
tion of moral achievement in those whom he 
is bringing to the true status of sonship to 


himself. 


To Empuasize Its Untversat CHARACTER 


Not only must a world redemption be true 
to the freedom and the nature of the individual, 
but it must likewise be universal and com- 


EE ———— 


WORLD REDEMPTION 185 


plete. That surely would be a sorry outcome 
of cosmic effort which resulted only in the 
redemption of some broken fragments of its 
creation. The demands of an all-wise and 
perfect Creator can be nothing less than the 
redemption of the whole social order, and that 
through the cooperating will of his creatures. 
‘To create the power of freedom bespeaks a 
genuine confidence in what shall eventually be 
accomplished through that freedom. If the 
results are to be something very much less 
than universal, the endowment of human life 
is but the meddlesome opening of a Pandora’s 
box whose results are irrevocable. Nothing 
Jess than the recovery of the whole social 
order, a world which out of tragedy and vicissi- 
tude has learned to love the will of God— 
such a world alone could be adequate justi- 
fication for pain and evil that have been world- 
wide and age-long. 

Furthermore, so large a result demands 
more than the redemption of any human 
institution with its short-sighted requirements, 
its half-insights and accomplishments, even 
though it be so great an institution as the 
Christian Church. It would be adequate only 
as it includes within its numbers from all ages 
and races all men of good will who follow 
after the Christ spirit. 


186 THE REASON IN FAITH 


As Inctupinc FULuLNEss oF LIFE 1N THIS 
PRESENT WoRLD 


World redemption can furthermore be con- 
sidered adequate only as it includes the dis- 
covery of fullness of life in the present world. 
All life—the life of individuals and through 
them of society at large—must be set to a 
new key. So long as justice in the social order 
remains unachieved, so long as we have not 
learned even the alphabet of true economic 
adjustment, so long as government itself is 
accomplished so blunderingly, we cannot pro- 
vide the basis of fullness of life for individual 
achievement. Our faulty educational methods 
waste the years and too often dissipate the 
moral fineness of the young. As a civilization 
we have not yet learned to appreciate and 
provide for the moral and spiritual training 
of the rising generation. ‘There is still too 
much of reward for the selfish and the evil- 
minded. Until man has learned to set up the 
kingdom of God on earth, how shall he learn 
to set it up in heaven? That is a childish 
conception which would turn from the pres- 
ence of a great moral task to dream that the 
mere transference of the field of activity would 
solve all perplexing problems. ‘There is one 
task more important for the Christian min- 


WORLD REDEMPTION 187 


ister than saving people for the world to come, 
and it is to save them for the world that now 
is. When this is done, we may safely leave 
the conditions and delights of that world to 
come in the hands of the Father of Spirits. 
If we have not learned to love and serve him 
here in the brethren he has given us, how 
shall we expect to love him or serve him better 
under other conditions? Redemption to be 
complete involves a new world-order in which 
every son of man shall have at least oppor- 
tunity for knowing choice and a chance to 
realize his fullest powers. In the face of so 
great a duty, to seek the transference of the 
problem to an after-life is to despise the spir- 
itual significance and reality of the life that 
now is. 


Anp Nature Aas WELL 


A world redemption to be complete must 
go even further than this and include nature 
herself. Only thus can be resolved the dark 
antinomies of pain and evil. If it be true 
that the natural world has been groaning 
and travailing in pain waiting for the appear- 
ance of the sons of God, a redeemed order 
must show a result worth all the suffering and 
a disciplinary purpose worth all the cost. 


188 THE REASON IN FAITH 


And this discipline when attained by “the 
sons of God” must be adequate for Riguant 
the age-long agony of nature. 


Anp Not an Enp in ITSELF 


World redemption to be adequate not only 
for the present world but also for the expand- 
ing life of a world to come must not end in 
itself. The one characteristic of life is growth, 
the expanding of latent powers. If the other 
life is to be life, and not death, it demands 
the growth of living experience in all who 
enter it. He, then, who here and now catches 
the keynote of the universe and learns in 
humble ways to think and love and work with 
God is but putting his hands to those appren- 
tice tasks which are the mere beginnings of 
vaster accomplishments. 


THE Source oF CATACLYSMIC SPECULATION 


One should not be surprised that views so 
radical, so contrasting, and so fundamental 
should find expression in the message of the 
New Testament. When one discovers the 
predominance of the cataclysmic note in the 
Old Testament, one is struck with the fact 
that the developmental teaching of Jesus was 
new to his age and in contrast with prevail- 


WORLD REDEMPTION 189 


ing ideas. The people were familiar with the 
hagiographical writings which were loaded with 
the expressions and similes of cataclysm. If 
Jesus was to speak to his own age, it was 
necessary for him to employ the language and 
the figures of speech which were familiar to 
the people. We must further take note that 
his message has come to us not directly but 
through the interpreting minds of men steeped 
in the eschatological view from their youth, 
who had no thought of the long centuries to 
pass before the consummation of the king- 
dom. Not only was it impossible for them to 
conceive, but to the infant church such 
knowledge would have brought discouragement 
profound and disconcerting. The vision was. 
wisely withheld from them. Even Jesus dis- 
claimed ability to look into that future to 
understand “‘the times and the seasons” which 
were known only to the Father. We find, 
then, a certain cataclysmic element in the 
synoptic Gospels, and with the growth of the 
church and the passage of time a leaving of 
the eschatological elements of the synoptics 
for the developmental emphasis of John. 

It is a strange fact that if we would find 
the basis of the Jewish and Christian con- 
ceptions of hell, heaven, the Judgment, angels 
and demons, we must go not to the canonical 


190 THE REASON IN FAITH 


portion of the Bible, but to those portions 
which have been rejected by the consensus of 
Jewish and Christian opinion. Some oné may 
cite the books of Daniel and Revelation as 
exceptions. These exceptions prove the rule. 
The book of Daniel was received very late, 
and a large portion of the Christian Church 
refused. to accept the Revelation until after 
the fourth century. So it would be almost 
impossible, aside from these, to construct 
from the canonical Scriptures the detailed 
theory which obtains through a large portion 
of Christendom. The Jewish conception of 
the Messianic kingdom and the last things 
which was prevalent in Jesus’ time sprang 
from that large number of apocryphal writings 
which grew up like mushrooms in the night 
of Jewish national history, extending from the 
time of the last of the Jewish prophets to the 
dawn of the Christian era. Chief among these 
apocryphal books was the Ethiopic Book of 
Enoch. Here you must go if you would find 
the common conception which filled the minds 
of the people of Jesus’ time. Here, indeed, you 
will find many of the phrases which Jesus 
used to express the Messianic consciousness. 
When he speaks of ‘“‘Gehenna,” ‘‘Hades,”’ 
“Satan,” etc., it is in the terms there expressed 
because those were the common terms of his 


WORLD REDEMPTION 191 


time and he had to deal with conceptions 
already present to the minds of his hearers. 

It is a matter of the utmost moment to us 
that Jesus recovered these prevalent concep- 
tions from the region of extravagance, and 
gave them a more simple and practical content. 

What was Jesus’ thought regarding the 
last things? 


Tue Catacrysmic TEACHINGS OF JESUS 


There are certain passages which indicate 
that he was thinking of a cataclysmic king- 
dom, the kingdom of God coming by the 
sudden and immediate return of the Son of 
man to judge the world. There are certain 
others which indicate that he thought of the 
kingdom as one which should slowly grow 
through the years. Still other sayings bring 
the thought of the kingdom of heaven as a 
kingdom of the spirit, even now present and 
conquering in the hearts of men. 

1. Among the first class of passages, those 
indicating an immediate return in judgment, 
are these: 

“The Son of man shall come in the glory of 
his Father with his angels; and then he shall 
reward every man according to his works. 
There be some standing here which shall not 


192 THE REASON IN FAITH 


taste of death till they see the Son of man 
coming in his kingdom.”! 

“And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, 
the disciples came unto him privately, saying, 
Tell us, when shall these things be? And what 
shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the 
end of the world? As the lightning cometh 
out of the east and shineth even unto the 
west; so shall also the coming of the Son of 
man be. Then shall appear the sign of the 
Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the 
tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see 
the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven 
with power and great glory. ) 

“And he shall send his angels with a great 
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather 
together his elect from the four winds, from 
one end of heaven to the other.”? 

“As the days of Noe were, so shall also the 
coming of the Son of man be. As in the days 
that were before the flood, they were eating 
and drinking, marrying and giving in mar- 
riage, until the day that Noe entered into the 
ark, and knew not until the flood came and 
took them all away; so shall also the coming 
of the Son of man be.’ 


1 Matt. 16. 27, 28. See also Mark 9. 1; Luke 9. 27. 
2 Matt. 24. 3, 27, 30, 31. 
3 Matt. 24. 37-39. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 193 


“Watch, therefore: for ye know not what 
hour your Lord doth come. If the good- 
man of the house had known in what watch 
the thief would come, he would have watched, 
and would not have suffered his house to be 
broken up. Therefore, be ye also ready; for 
in such an hour as ye think not the Son of 
man cometh.’ 

“At midnight there was a cry made, Behold 
the bridegroom cometh. Go ye out to meet 
him. While they went to buy, the bridegroom 
came. And they that were ready went in with 
him to the marriage; and the door was shut. 
Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day 
nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. 
After a long time the Lord of those servants 
cometh, and reckoneth with them. When the 
Son of man shall come in his glory, and all 
the holy angels with him, then shall he sit 
upon the throne of his glory.’”” 

“Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man 
sitting on the right hand of power and coming 
in the clouds of heaven.’’® 

“Then shall he send his angels, and shall 
gather together his elect to the uttermost part 
of heaven. Of that day and that hour know- 

4Matt. 24. 42, 43, 44. 


5 Matt. 25. 6. 
6 Matt. 26. 64. 


194 THE REASON IN FAITH 


eth no man, no, not the angels which are in 
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 
Watch ye, therefore: for ye know not when 
the Master of the house cometh, at even, or 
at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in 
the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you 
sleeping.’’” 

“Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the 
right hand of power, and coming in the clouds 
of heaven.’’® | 

“Then shall they see the Son of man coming 
in a cloud with power and glory. And when 
these things begin to come to pass, then look 
up, and lift up your heads. For your redemp- 
tion draweth nigh.” | 

“And he spake to them a parable; Behold 
the fig tree and all the trees. When they now 
shoot forth, ye see and know of your own 
selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So 
likewise ye, when ye see these things come 
to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God 
is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This 
generation shall not pass away, till all be ful- 
filled. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, 
that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all 
these things that shall come to pass, and to 
stand before the Son of man.” 


7 Mark 18. 27-36. See Matt. 24. 36. 
8 Mark 14. 62. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 195 


With these should be taken the parable of 
the ten virgins, in which the Kingdom 1s repre- 
sented as coming suddenly, also the parables 
of the talents, the pounds, the vineyard, the 
wicked husbandman, the householder, and the 
thief. 

2. In the second place, Jesus was fond of 
' representing the Kingdom as a matter of 
growth: first the blade, then the stalk, then 
the full corn in the ear. The Kingdom was 
to be like a householder who rose night and 
day, and while he slept the corn grew in the 
field. Or the Kingdom was to be like the 
mustard seed, small in its beginnings, but 
growing to great proportions. It was to be 
like the leaven, changing the whole mass by 
gradual process. “Now is the judgment of 
this world: now shall the prince of this world 
be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto me.’ 

3. Again, when he was pressed for a sign of 
the Kingdom, he declared that the kingdom 
of God cometh not with observation. “Neither 
shall ye say, Lo here, or lo there, for the king- 
dom of God is in the midst of you.” He 
declared to John’s messengers that the king- 
dom of heaven which John had preached as 
near at hand was already present in the healing 

® John 12. 31-32. 


196 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of the sick and in the preaching of the gospel 
to the poor. The kingdom of heaven is like 
the seed of the sower, received by those hearts 
that were open to it. 

The apocalyptic sayings fall for the most 
part into the closing portion of his ministry, 
after his practical rejection by his people. 
Was he disappointed in their response to his 
gospel? Had he hoped at least for a new day 
for Israel, and did their rejection of his words 
show him that the hope of a peaceful coming 
of the Kingdom was small? Did he see that 
only destruction and terror could affect a 
people so willfully obdurate? Did the dis- 
ciples gather from these prophecies respect- 
ing the immediate destruction of Jerusalem in 
that generation a wider import than they 
were intended to convey? Did ‘the disciples 
report the exact words, or were they influ- 
enced in their conception of what he meant 
by their own Jewish expectations? Were they 
in writing out the record unconsciously influ- 
enced in their interpretations by the death of 
Jesus, the precarious condition of the infant 
church, and the swift panorama of events 
which were leading to the destruction of 
Jerusalem? ‘These and a thousand other ques- 
tions, over which scholars have been long 
divided, arise to the mind. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 197 


Again and again men have computed from 
the symbolic figures of the Apocalypse the 
time of his coming, knowledge which was 
denied to Jesus in the flesh, and even to the 
angels in heaven. The men of the first gen- 
eration looked for the second coming before 
their death. It was the early dream of Paul, 
_which faded into a larger vision as the years 
rolled by. Its expectation unsettled the whole 
life of Europe at the end of the tenth century. 
Some very good people of to-day make it the 
backbone of doctrine. The question will arise: 
Can that which was so unimportant to the 
mind of Christ be of such supreme importance 
to his disciples? The only question for you 
and me is: Are we at present in the Kingdom? 
If so, when he comes is a matter of indifference. 


Tur NoNcATACLYSMIC CHARACTER OF THE 
FourtH GOSPEL 


Nearly if not quite all the citations given 
for the cataclysmic thought of the Kingdom 
are to be found in the synoptic Gospels. If, 
now, we turn to the Gospel of John, we shall 
find what seems to be a changed tenor of 
interpretation upon the words of Jesus. This 
was the last Gospel to be written. Its writer 
was beginning to get the perspective of history. 
Throughout the Gospel there was a different 


198 THE REASON IN FAITH 


emphasis from that of the synoptics. The 
judgment of religious minds on this Gospel 
has been better than that of the adverse critics. 
We see in it the influence that Jesus prophesied. 
The Spirit has taken of the things of Christ 
and has shown them to the writer of this 
Gospel. The Gospel of John records a new 
appreciation of Jesus. Stress is laid no longer 
on a cataclysmic return of Jesus, but on his 
living presence in the hearts of his disciples. 
He is the light which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world. In him is life, 
and the life is the light of men. The Son is 
sent into the world not for purposes of con- 
demnation, but that the world through him 
might be saved.” | 

Judgment is internal rather than external. 

“If any man hear my words, and believe 
not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge 
the world, but to save the world. He that 
rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, 
hath one that judgeth him: the word that I 
have spoken, the same shall judge him at the 
last day.” 

The discourse on the destruction of Jeru- 
salem and the end of the world, given by 
Matthew, Mark and Luke, is entirely absent. 


10 John 3. 17-18. 
1 John 12. 47-48. 


WORLD REDEMPTION 199 


The “coming of the kingdom” is a new birth 
of the Spirit. 

“Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God.” 

“Tf I go and prepare a place for you, I will 
come again and receive you unto myself.”’” 

Finally, the closing verses of the Gospel give 
frank denial to the report that John must be 
expected to live until the second coming of 
Christ. To this general tenor there is but a 
single exception.” 


IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 
~RECONCILABLE 


The persistence of the cataclysmic and 
developmental views side by side through 
history should lead us to humility toward the 
discarding of either. What is so persistent 
is sure to contain elements of truth. The 
great conflict has arisen out of a natural 
temperamental proclivity toward one or the 
other which influences nearly every one. 

Are the two ideas inconsistent and irrecon- 
cilable? Must we reject either the synoptics 
or John? Must we adopt the cataclysmic 
theory and reject the wisdom of modern sci- 
ence or adopt the developmental view to the 
discarding of the other? No, we must adopt 


12 John 14. 3. 
18 John 5. 28-29. 


200 THE REASON IN FAITH 


both by finding the common ground of truth 
which they contain. What will help us in the 
face of the seeming paradox? Let us turn 
to life and experience. 

My student days brought me into almost 
daily association with the mural paintings of 
Puvis de Chavannes in the Boston Public 
Library. Years later, on stepping into the 
Pantheon at Paris, without in any way know- 
ing what to expect, I had no more than entered 
the door before I exclaimed “Puvis de 
Chavannes!” There was no need of signa- 
ture, for those pictures were themselves vocal 
of the artist and beyond mistake. The sub- 
jects of the two series are very different, but 
the manner of treatment, the use of color, the 
personal attitude and philosophy of life of 
the painter have indubitably entered into the 
expression of the painter. As expressive of 
the painter’s very life and soul he may be 
spoken of as immanent in his picture. This 
is specially true of creative effort of every 
kind. But while the artist is immanent in 
his picture, he also transcends it. 

So must we think of God as both immanent 
and transcendent. The order of nature and of 
life are expressions of his immanence. But 
we could not by summing up all his works 
get him, his willing free personality. In that 


WORLD REDEMPTION 201 


he possesses self-consciousness and self-direc- 
tion, he is never lost in his works; he tran- 
scends them. This unique power of immanence 
and transcendence occurs in but one situation 
—in creative will, in what, for want of a better 
term, we describe as personality. 

The newer theories of physics maintain that 
‘in the ultimate what we describe as matter 
is simply the radio-active forces which com- 
prise it. These forces we can only measure; 
what they are we cannot say. Matter is, then, 
an activity so far as we can know it. What 
science cannot say is whence comes this force. 
Sometimes it assumes the question closed 
there. Is there any sound reason for not 
assuming that this activity is the activity of 
a supreme directing Intelligence? It might 
well be that what we call nature is but the 
active manifestation of himself. What we 
call natural law would then be but the expres- 
sion of his will. There would be literal truth 
in Paul’s expression, “In him we live and 
move and have our being.” But this kind 
of immanence is not the kind that binds every- 
thing in one bundle. He that is immanent in 
the world of nature also transcends it. Nature 
is not the body from which he cannot escape. 
It is one of the modes through which he ex- 
presses himself; it need not be the only mode. 


202 THE REASON IN FAITH 


To make that assumption would be to assume 
the painter confined to a single picture. God’s 
willing purpose transcends all his works. While 
he works uniformly, and that uniformity is 
called natural law, contingency is not precluded. 
Obviously, the race of men ought to venerate 
his uniformity of action as much as any miracle 
because upon uniformity depends the life and 
well-being of all. Whatever, then, is done by 
natural law is as divine as what is willed in 
any other way; and we are rid at a stroke of 
a God of caprice and unreason. 

There are many reasons to believe that the 
evolution of life as well as of civilization has 
been both by uniformity and by the cata- 
clysms in nature which might be called jumps 
or unaccountable appearances of the unique. 
At heart there can be no conflict, for all true 
laws of the universe are God’s laws. Any 
reverent effort after any kind of truth is an effort 
after God’s truth and in the end the truths of 
nature and the soul must be found in harmony 
because they proceed from the same source. 

Here, then, is that synthesized dualism of 
which we spoke in the beginning of this chap- 
ter. The order of nature and the order of 
spirit find their synthesis in the Personality 
which maintains both as the manifestation of 
his own creative will. 


CHAPTER IX 


POSSIBLE ERROR, PAIN, AND EVIL 
THE SCHOOLMASTERS OF LIFE 


Tue man of the street seldom makes the 
proper distinctions between error, pain, and 
evil or thinks those distinctions through to 
their philosophical bases. They are the school- 
master triad of life, but this not in their 
actuality so much as in their possibility. Error 
is an affair of mind or the intellect, and the 
care necessary to avoid it is the source of the 
mental discipline through which man masters 
that portion of his world amenable to thought. 
Pain is least easily understood, but it appears 
to be the schoolmaster to physical well-being 
and the care of the body. Evil touches the 
soul and is the dark shadow which haunts 
spiritual and moral freedom. It should be 
understood at once that neither pain, error, 
nor evil is in itself ever desirable or necessary. 
The important thing is that man should learn 
the power of banishing them from the earth, 
and in the learning come into the fullest and 
highest possession of his own powers. The 


greatest confusion arises from the failure to 
203 


204 THE REASON IN FAITH 


distinguish between their possibility and their 
actuality. Too often we think of them as 
existing abstractly as something apart from 
concrete instances, and thus apotheosized, it 
seems necessary to retain them in a universal 
relation. So much emphasis is put by some 
upon the existence of a devil, apart from 
devilish activities, that if he and all his works 
were eventually to be cast out, it would ruin 
their main theological conceptions. Such an 
attitude of divided power in the moral realm 
amounts in some cases to little less than demon 
worship. The triad represents the profoundest 
problems that are raised for man’s under- 
standing. Error is the bugbear of every theory 
of thought or knowledge and ean be even 
partially met only as it is carried up into 
metaphysics. It is distinctly the rock on 
which all materialisms break. Pain and evil 
are the perplexity of theistic types of think- 
ing. There is no hope that in this brief chapter 
we shall solve problems which have been the 
despair of the world’s sages, but there are some 
considerations which, taken into account, make 
the problems less intolerable. These sugges- 
tions are not new, and they lie along the beaten 
track, namely, the disciplinary character of 
error, pain, and evil. 

The problem of error is insoluble from any 


SCHOOLMASTERS OF LIFE 205 


theory of knowledge that is fundamentally 
materialistic. Whether knowledge be taken as 
the product of the writing upon the mental 
organism of external impressions over which the 
will has no control or the result of finer psy- 
chological reactions implied by the functioning 
organism, the result is the same. No dis- 
tinction is possible between truth and error. 
All mental products must be equally true. 
Mechanism has been able to settle this prob- 
lem in only one consistent way, and that has 
been the way of philosophical skepticism, the 
denial of the possibility of knowledge. If we 
are going to reach such a conclusion, there 
certainly are less painful and less complicated 
ways of reaching it. There are minds that 
profess to find intellectual peace in the denial 
of knowledge, but that attitude calls for a 
peculiar intellectual disposition. Most pen- 
etrative minds can tolerate anything but an 
intellectual deadlock. 

If we discard mechanical theories of knowl- 
edge, while the result may not be altogether 
satisfactory, it is at least less difficult and less 
conflicting with the practical issues of life. 
In the possibility of error seems to be the 
whetting of intellectual curiosity from which 
may have come the prime intellectual develop- 
ment of man. It is impossible to say who 


206 THE REASON IN FAITH 


would give himself to painful effort to pur- 
sue knowledge if the realists were correct and 
everything is immediately seen, as it is. The 
likelihood of mistake, the conflict of opinion, 
lies at the very basis of scientific effort. It 
is to remove the individual chances of error 
and to conform observations to uniform and 
reasonable laws that the scientist works. Scien- 
tific knowledge is distinguished from common 
knowledge in just this way, that insistence 
is made on facts not just as they appear to 
the individual, but as they appear to many 
or all who have been trained to observe the 
facts. The possibility of being mistaken in 
spite of the most exceeding pains is what has 
added exactness to man’s mental operations 
and has thereby prepared him for a moral 
and spiritual exactness which were otherwise 
impossible. 

Let no one say that error is necessary to 
knowledge. The possibility of error only is 
needed, and in that careful distinction lies the 
hope of man that some day he shall know 
even as also he is known. Some exalt the 
intuitional faculties as if it were a step back- 
ward in evolution when man struck out to 
rationalize his world instead of depending upon 
instinctive knowledge of it. But if there was 
such a time in racial history it should be looked 


i a 


SCHOOLMASTERS OF LIFE = 207 


upon as the magna charta of man’s mental 
kingdom. Better far many blind mistakes, 
if only in the long run he shall learn to use 
his brain, than a dull following of instincts. 
In rationalization lay the coming creative 
power of man which will eventually make him 
a new world. Mankind would seem to owe its 
mental equipment very largely to the possi- 
bility of error. 


PAIN AND THE ADVANCE oF CIVILIZATION 


As in the case of error and evil, perplexity 
arises from the failure to distinguish between 
pain and its possibility. As the possibility of 
error is the source of man’s mental activity, 
the possibility of pain is fundamental to his 
physical and social well-being. 

The existence of nerves which cause intense 
suffering under abnormal physical conditions 
is not an evil but a good. Thus it is that the 
body is able to hang out the distress signal 
for its own preservation. If physical violence 
were unattended by pain, we should most of 
us go through life maimed and deformed by 
acts done in ignorance and before our minds 
had arrived at the possibility of knowledge. 
Nerves are as necessary an equipment of a 
sound body as any other part of the organ- 
ism and are absolutely necessary to save us 


208 THE REASON IN FAITH 


from self-destruction. The possibility of pain 
is thus seen to be necessary to physical 
existence. Has it any effect of a social nature? 


Its Socrat Usss 


Here we hit upon a use of pain which goes 
outside of individual well-being into the wider 
reaches of social welfare. The recognition of - 
the possibility of pain is one of the strongest 
impulses making for social welfare. If our 
neighbor, friend, or enemy is incapable of pain, 
there is no call for us to spend energy upon 
any welfare than our own. If he is capable 
of pain arising from our action, we have social 
responsibility. Any teaching that pain is an 
unreality is fundamentally anti-social. Out of 
the possibility of pain have grown the amelio- 
rative agencies of society and the successive 
stages of civilization may be marked exactly 
by growth in these agencies. It is moral 
sensitiveness to pain in others that has abol- 
ished slavery and ended peonage and led the 
path of every social reform. It is leading the 
way out of brutality and animality to man’s 
higher self-realization. Its increase is the sign 
of civilization. It will end some day and the 
Injustices and miseries of time, when pain shall 
have at last been put under leash and 
conquered. 


SCHOOLMASTERS OF LIFE — 209 


Evit anp Morau SrELFHoop 


In none of these dark problems is there 
likely to be so much of unclearness and of 
confused thinking as in the problem of evil. 
The average person fails after many explana- 
tions to see any distinction between the possi- 
bility of evil and its existence. Show him that 
moral character is dependent on moral choice 
and that moral choice is impossible without 
contrasting alternatives and he will assent. 
In the very next breath he will be assuming 
that evil as an act is identical with evil as a 
possibility. However difficult it may be, never- 
_ theless there is a distinction, and a distinction 
which is the turning of the ways for theism. 
Distinguish evil as a moral act and one can 
reasonably save the moral character of God. 
Fail to make that distinction and one can 
keep moral character in God only by a resort 
to an eternal dualism which denies his power. 
If evil is to be defined as a moral act of the 
will, it can be distinguished from temptation, 
it exists only where there are evil-willing per- 
sonalities. Each individual can conquer it 
for himself, and there is hope for a world in 
which all men shall be of good will and the 
kingdom of God shall have come in power. 

The animal world knows no evil because it 


210 THE REASON IN FAITH 


cannot reflect upon the moods of its own 
consciousness. There is no moral “‘oughtness”’ 
except as it learns to connect certain of its 
acts with punishment. Human reflection rises 
above this instinctive plane of action. Be- 
cause of the sense of “oughtness” man reflects 
on his choices, can restrain his impulses, and 
direct his energies into what appeal to him 
to be the higher channels. Out of this moral 
experience of freedom grows moral character. 
We cannot now see how, as things are con- 
stituted, moral character or moral freedom 
could issue from any other state. Surely, no 
man could be called actively good who was 
good simply because he could not be bad. 
The possibility of evil for each one of us gives 
the value to our right moral choices which 
come by struggle and self-mastery. Just as 
the possibility of error has helped to produce 
man’s mental development, and as the possi- 
bility of pain has taught the care of the body 
and social amelioration, so the possibility of 
evil has led the way to the development of 
moral character, the building of the human 
soul. 

Let no one say that we have thus declared 
evil a necessity for goodness. We need not 
“sin that grace may abound.” It is quite 
sufficient evidence of grace and of character 


SCHOOLMASTERS OF LIFE 211 


that the sin is not entered into. One is quite 
as much saved from sins never committed as 
from those actually entered into. The best 
evidence of moral character is not reformation 
but steadfast and life-long refusal to enter 
into sin. 


THE SoLuTIoN or Turse PRoBLEMS 
1s PERSONAL 


We can make no headway with the prob- 
lems of error, pain, and evil so long as we 
remain on the impersonal plane. We can 
never account in a general and wholesale way 
for the wandering of entire races of men through 
_ the dark mazes of superstition and error. We 
cannot justify the destruction which follows 
in the wake of wholesale disaster. We cannot 
even account for the suffering and death of 
one other human being. Hardest of all is it 
to gather from the field sown with evil deeds 
any harvest of hope. Why the world has so 
long been allowed to exist as the field of 
exploitation for evil is beyond the power of 
any man to explain. We are able to read but 
a single chapter from the book of life, and we 
catch but occasional glimpses of that Creative 
Mind behind all. 

There is one sort of solution, however, of 
which each is capable. It is possible for each 


212 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of us to see that pain, error, and possibility 
of moral evil work in us a growing mastery 
of nature, of our physical powers, and the 
self-discipline of our souls. Out of the struggle 
with the chance of error we can build a mental 
life that can see straight and solve problems 
which reach into the field of the hitherto. 
unknown. It is not so much necessity that is 
the mother of invention as it is the mental 
power which grasps the idea of what is 
necessary. 

Out of our struggle with pain and disease 
can come for us individually both sweetness 
and light. We can bear patiently and not be 
embittered, and we can learn lovingly to care 
for the less fortunate and so build the struc- 
ture of the family, society, and civilization. 
Out of temptation we can gather to ourselves 
the moral power of continuously right decisions, 
and when all men have truly learned that 
lesson, we shall have a heavenly society not 
because from us has been taken away the 
possibility but because we have conquered the 
will to sin. 

The general problem is in a wiser and an all- 
understanding Mind. The particular problem 
is specifically our own. Just why error, pain, 
and evil should have been permitted, we do 
not know and cannot say. But it may be that 


SCHOOLMASTERS OF LIFE — 213 


to God, the final mental, social and moral 
outcome was worth the venture, and to his 
eye there may be a goal far off of such supreme 
worth for every son of man as to far outweigh 
every distress. It is the part of religion to 
live as if this were true. 


CHAPTER X 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF 
IMMORTALITY | 


THE source and the warrant of the human 
_ dream of immortality has furnished unending 
controversy. Neither the appeal to history, 
to science, nor to individual experience has 
been at all satisfactory. It has assumed 
different forms with different civilizations and 
in none has received such definite form as in 
the Christian faith. Even here there is much 
teaching about it which seems unwarranted 
in any words coming from thé Founder of 
Christianity himself. Undoubtedly, Christian- 
ity in its formative period was profoundly 
influenced at this point by the eschatological 
theories current at the time. It has been 
denied and doubted and assailed again and 
again, but the theory of immortality holds 
such comfort for man that it has never been 
successfully assailed. For this fact there must 
be some adequate reason, and we believe it 
lies within the functioning of the human 
spirit itself. 
214 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 215 


ARISES FROM THE TIME-TRANSCENDING 
NaturRE or EXPERIENCE 

It is doubtful if there is any other animal 
than man who is ever troubled with the notion 
of immortality. The animal is conscious of 
his surroundings and his relation to them, 
but to man is granted the unique gift of con- 
sciousness of conscious states. In other words, 
he possesses the power of reflection upon his 
own moods. While the animal obeys im- 
pulses, man questions them, and out of this 
power of reflection rises man’s moral world, 
the sense of moral responsibility, and with it 
civilization and culture. He masters his world 
as the animal does not master it because he 
possesses the unique gift of mastering himself 
and his own thoughts. 

There is reason, therefore, to take issue 
with a great body of present-day anthropolog- 
ical teaching which attempts to ground the 
consciousness of immortality upon visions of 
the dream state and the division of person- 
ality arising out of the distinction between 
dreams and waking consciousness. The ground 
of the feeling of immortality lies, rather, be- 
hind these in that functioning of the human 
mind which enables it to reflect upon the 
nature of its dreaming as distinguished from 
its waking experience. There is little doubt 


216 THE REASON IN FAITH 


that animals dream; there is no evidence to 
show that they reflect upon a dream state 
or distinguish between dream and waking 
experience. For a similar reason it seems 
far-fetched to attribute the rise of a belief in 
immortality to a belief in ghosts resulting 
from dreams of the dead. Here, again, we 
must go back to that fundamental functioning 
of the human mind which distinguishes the 
dream state from the waking state and identi- 
fies, perhaps, the dream state with continued 
existence in another world or spirit-plane of 
life. Neither is it quite reasonable to affirm 
that the theory of immortality (and with some 
all religion) arises out of fear of the dead. 
This fear is common in animals, without in 
any way giving rise to religious or moral 
reflections. We have here, as in the case of 
the horse which fears to approach a dead 
body, all the elements of psychological in- 
hibitions except that part which in man arises 
from his power of reflection. The difference in the 
experience of the horse and the man is worlds 
apart for this very distinct reason which the 
behavioristic psychologists are prone to ignore. 


But From THE TEMPORAL CONSCIOUSNESS 


The human mind has not been long at its 
work of interpreting experience until it be- 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 217 


comes conscious of an order of time. In 
fact, the second conscious experience is set up 
under a time relation to the first and to the 
perceiving self. Henceforth we have a grow- 
ing consciousness of a double order—an order 
of experiences bearing relation to each other 
and an order of self-consciousness which ob- 
serves and transcends the order of experience. 
Man is conscious of the past with relation to 
the present and very soon learns to project 
the present experience into the future, to reflect 
upon it and to act with it in mind. He thus 
becomes the master of time, and, being lim- 
ited by it, yet transcends it. It will at once 
be objected that the animals likewise are 
“time-binders,” to use the phrase of Count 
Korzybski, for we find them making pro- 
vision for the future. The dog buries the 
bone against the morrow, the bee provides 
against the coming winter; there are number- 
less instances. But it does not appear, there- 
fore, that there is any reflective consciousness 
of time. The action may be as instinctive or 
“functional,” to use a popular scientific expres- 
sion, as the provision of the tree for the dis- 
semination of its seed, or its preparation for 
approaching seasons. The absence of reflection 
is clearly shown in the case of animals by their 
utter lack of adjustment to a changed environ- 


218 THE REASON IN FAITH 


ment. The trapdoor spider, according to 
Fabre, if her work of building the nest which 
is to protect her eggs be interrupted, will 
simply complete the operation from the point 
at which she was arrested. She has no power 
of reflection and cannot therefore go back 
and start again. She finishes off as if the 
previous work had not been destroyed, even 
though to do so means sure destruction for 
the eggs she is about to deposit. While, 
therefore, the animals may be declared “‘time- 
binders,” the distinction relative to time 
between themselves and man is that man 
possesses the capability of reflection upon the 
order of consciousness. He is a time being 
if you please, but also a time-transcending 
being as well. Being time-transcending, having 
had countless experiences of the survival of 
time, he naturally expects to continue the 
survival of time. He cannot think of himself 
as nonsurviving or nonexisting; to do so would 
be paradoxical. The chief item of personal 
experience is continuity. Hence all theories of 
nonsurvival have had hard sledding because 
they fight the most fundamental consciousness 
of experience. On the other hand, a con- 
sciousness of immortality is functional and for 
its definite development only awaits the fur- 
ther progress of reflection. For this reason 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 219 


the growing reflection of man and the higher 
development of his powers of self-conscious- 
ness are sure to deepen his consciousness of 
the need for immortality. 

The conviction of immortality does not 
grow insistent except in the presence of an 
eternal order of living. This point is fre- 
quently overlooked by disbelievers in immor- 
tality. It is true that it may be repulsive 
when not raised to the higher plane and seen 
sub specie aeternitatis. There is no demand 
for the continuance of a life taken up merely 
with eating, drinking, and being clothed withal. 
A future state of unending wassail, while it has 
found its way into the Christian hymnal, is 
not Christian teaching. There is no obvious 
reason for the continuity of a life which lives 
only in and for things that perish with the 
using. Such immortality would be useless and 
meaningless. Such an order of life becomes 
wearisome to the jaded pleasure-seeker even 
here and now; its extension to all eternity 
would be a horror. This is the fertile source 
of modern skepticism. 

It is only as life takes hold upon the pro- 
founder issues that the demand for immor- 
tality becomes clear. If life is bent upon the 
interests that transcend time, then there is 
all the force of life demanding immortality. 


220 THE REASON IN FAITH 


There is possible to man a self-forgetfulness of 
service which for far-reaching insight cannot 
be completed in the short span of his earthly 
career. There is possible love that shines even 
more clearly through the shadows of death 
and lives on undimmed by time and change. 
There is loyalty that passes the expression of 
the feeble years. To say that man’s aspira- 
tions are raised to this consciousness only to 
be denied is not only to go contrary to what- 
ever else we see in nature and life, but is also 
to deny the persistence of the most real values. 
The very reflections that lift him above the 
brute world and endow his life with greatness 
and worth must be taken as the illusory 
phantasm of a dream. We have said this is 
contrary to the experience of nature. What- 
ever functional instincts are given to tree and 
animal in the way of provision for propagation 
and care for its offspring are in general stead- 
fastly met by nature. If the thistle wings 
its seeds, the broadcasting air is not wanting; 
if the walnut builds a thick, hard coat for its 
germ of life, the winter is not far away; if 
the spider is gifted with functional instincts, 
it is because those provisional instincts corre- 
spond to an existing reality. If, then, one result 
of man’s functional reflection is the conscious- 
ness of continuity, there is reason to presume 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 221 


that there is something in reality corresponding 
to it. 

If it be true that an eternal order of living 
demands immortality, it is further true that 
such an order of life alone can satisfy the 
human spirit. Of course there are examples 
enough of those who seem satisfied with meat 
and drink and lust, but the common mind of 
the race repudiates them and follows after 
those who live by the higher order. And these 
who momentarily seem so well content are 
stirred betimes with dark misgivings as of 
those who throw away their richest oppor- 
tunities, and waste life. If life be lived after 
ideals that enlarge as they are realized, death 
becomes but the introduction into an order 
unlimited by temporal and spatial conditions in 
which whatever is willed is done. 


Is in Accorp with THE Locic oF 
Lire AND GROWTH 


The consciousness of immortality is further 
in strict accord with the logic of life and growth. 
The struggle of the individual for knowledge, 
his apprenticeship in the work of adjustment 
of his life to social relations and moral de- 
mands, call for an extension of time. Most 
men have only begun to learn’ how to live 


222 THE REASON IN FAITH 


when death calls them. There are unnum- 
bered evidences that the present life is only 
an apprenticeship in self-mastery and _ self- 
control, the anteroom to some vaster life. 
And man is the only being in nature whose 
earthly career takes on the aspect of frag- 
mentariness. If one replies that such may be 
only in his own thoughts, the question arises 
why he alone of all creation has those most 
troublesome thoughts. To leave him without 
immortality is to truncate his possible span of 
usefulness and to make him unhappiest and 
least useful of all with no rational excuse for 
existence. | 
The belief in immortality has been much 
hindered by the false emphasis which is fre- 
quent in much religious teaching. This doc- 
trine urges man to prepare for a future life as 
if that life were not already begun. Thus an 
unfortunate dualism dwells in it to defeat its 
own end. That future life, if it be a con- 
tinuity, depends upon the order of life that 
is now participated in. If one is now living 
after the eternal order, he need not waste 
energy in useless conjecture as to the nature 
of that life to come. He is already learning 
how to live in God’s world after a divine order 
and will be at home anywhere where God is 
King. His task is not to get to heaven, but 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 223 


to get heaven in his heart and life. His one 
concern here is to acclimate himself to God’s 
high order of living, then death itself shall 
be but the opening of a door into a less limited 
life, but into one with which he is already 
familiar because he has lived according to 
the spiritual order. 


ImMMorTAuitTy 1s InprIvipvuAL or NoTtHING 


Much vogue is being given by writers on 
psychology and philosophy to the notion that 
the demand for immortality is satisfied by a 
sort of deathless or at least extended influence 
that one leaves behind in the memories of 
others. It needs only that we remind our- 
selves in the face of such claims that such is 
immortality only in name. It could never 
satisfy a clean-cut, reflective mind. The 
present life centers about personal experience. 
Its consciousness is made by its power to relate 
itself to the common order of experiences. 
Its experiences are nothing if not individual. 
Life takes on unfolding meaning only as a 
person transcends time to gather the passing 
procession of events into a system of relations. 
All man’s knowledge is dependent upon this. 
Upon it hang rationality, mental growth, and 
everything that makes life meaningful. The 


224 THE REASON IN FAITH 


personal continuity through time and change 
is the thread upon which all hangs. If. this 
is severed, there is no immortality. Even to 
sink into Nirvana would not be immortality 
unless in that Nirvana one were to keep the 
distinction of selfhood. Transmigration would 
not be immortality without a clear remem- 

brance of its previous state. Panpsychism — 
would for similar reasons be equally meaning- 
less. Immortality to be such has the same 
center as living experience, a continued and 
relating personality. | 


Ir 1s OutsipE THE FIELD OF SCIENTIFIC 
DEMONSTRATION 


That immortality is outside the field of 
scientific demonstration may at first glance 
appear a perilous statement in view of the 
efforts of present-day scientists to thus estab- 
lish it. It is possible to enter this denial, 
however, without denying any material facts 
which may be unearthed by psychical research. 
It is a far cry from the proof of thought trans- 
ference, mental influences, and all to the 
scientific demonstration that they arise from 
ghostly sources. Barring the obvious and 
continuously practiced fraud—and in the line 
of his desire the scientist is no less susceptible 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 225 


to fraud than other human beings—the research 
has never been put upon a basis satisfactory 
to science. It is equally unsatisfactory to 
religion. Fundamentally, by whatever name 
called, psychism, spiritualism, or what-not, 
fundamentally it is materialism. It assumes 
the notion, popular with some scientists, that 
materiality is identical with reality, and that 
there is nothing real which is not also material. 
It is not necessary here to point out the inev- 
itable skepticism and uselessness for life of 
such an assumption. It has been demonstrated 
times without number in the history of thought. 
The claim is that the pint measure of mate- 
rialism is sufficient for the measurement of all 
values, and that whatever cannot be thus 
measured simply is not. Even a mother’s 
love seems more real to this kind of a pseudo- 
scientist if he can state it in terms of chemical 
reaction or (dipus complex, to such a swinish 
estate has much of our thinking fallen. The 
attempt to photograph spirits, or to construct 
a telephone through which they may speak, 
or to set forward a medium by whom they 
may communicate, is a presumption that, 
though they are of another order of life, their 
existence can be proved only in terms of this 
order. Spiritualism, if it did succeed, could 
only prove that death has brought no change 


226 THE REASON IN FAITH 


for the better, but, rather, for the worse, in 
which self-expression is even more difficult 
than before death. 

The fact is that affairs of the soul are not 
materially demonstrable; they belong to an- 
other order. We cannot speak of the finer 
experiences of human relationship or of religion 
except in material figures of speech, which does 
fairly well to get ourselves understood by like- 
minded people until the literalist happens to 
compel our figures of speech to go on all fours. 
This the spiritualist attempts to do, with the 
result that he is false to every demand both 
of religion and of science. 

We know only of the life-to-be through the 
glimpses and foregleams of our own souls 
testifying to the souls around. Should some 
return from that happy place, they could bear 
us no understanding of its conditions because 
there would be no language of common under- 
standing. They could tell us only in terms 
we already know, and we should be as blind 
after their speech as before. It is as with 
the modern psychological conception of love 
as a chemical reaction. When we have found 
that physically chemical change has taken 
place, we know no more about love than we 
did before. Love is of another order and 
cannot be expressed in material terms or 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY 227 


reduced to the material. When you think 
you have it, it is just exactly what you have 
not. It may be, after all, that the insight of 
Paul was best, who summed up his description 
of the after life in these words: “Eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered 
into the heart of man, the things which God 
hath prepared for them that love him.” 


CHAPTER XI 
CREATIVE PERSONALITY 


Our time has been marked by an increase 
of interest in the meaning and development 
of personality. The note of individualism 
fostered by the philosophy and institutions 
of medizvalism, which burst into full flower 
with the enlightenment giving us the natural- 
self philosophy of Rousseau, has changed in 
temper to a quest for personalism. It is not 
strange that individualism was the forerunner 
of this present temper, for to mistake indi- 
vidualism for personalism is the most natural 
of errors. In fact, personalism could not come 
into the foreground until individualism had 
been tried and found wanting. The philosophy 
of nature was characteristically a revolt from 
institutions which had proved inimical to the 
development of the individual. Everywhere 
the undertone of the age was a demand for 
self-fulfillment through political privilege. It 
was the age of reason and of individual rights, 
and it secured its charter from the inner 


consciousness of man himself, who had slowly 
228 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 229 


been learning his inherent dignity. The move- 
ment meant a great step forward in society. 
It accomplished not only the overthrow of 
remaining feudalism but also a new conception 
of government and essential democracy. Its 
weakness lay in its one-sidedness, for while 
it emphasized individual rights, it relatively 
neglected individual duties to society as a 
whole. Thus it was given a tone and a striv- 
ing wanting in the moral element. Great 
stress was laid on individual feeling and emo- 
tion, a straining at individuality which too 
often had separated the individual from sym- 
pathetic touch with his fellows, with his past, 
and with his own widest fulfillment. Abundant 
illustrations are to be found in realistic art, 
literature, music, and the present-day formulas 
in education. Much energy is spent upon the 
fleeting emotions of the individual, his likes 
and dislikes, which is resulting in a culture 
cut off from the past which is so thin as to 
be lacking in both dignity and power. How 
shall the lost balance be restored? This is 
the problem of the hour. The aspiration 
toward increased personality and the longing 
for creative power was never more deeply felt 
than now; yet the field of its study has been 
scarcely touched in philosophy, and in psy- 
chology has been dominated by a single 


230 THE REASON IN FAITH 


dogmatic tyranny, that of a blind and com- 
plete materialism, impatient of logic, com- 
mitted to mechanism. ‘There is need that in 
this problem the two disciplines (if, indeed, 
they can be divided) of philosophy and psy- 
chology should work together. Personality 
presents a most interesting field of investiga- 
tion, for it is that of which we are most con- 
scious; it is at once that which is most 
alluring, most baffling, most deceiving, and 
most important. 

Our method here shall be to reduce to lowest 
terms and then to seek what is essential and 
what bears directly on life. 


PERSONALITY IN SIMPLEST TERMS SELF- 
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-DIRECTION 


Reduced to the lowest possible terms, we 
should probably be forced to define person- 
ality as the center of self-consciousness and 
self-direction, the center because to recognize 
either self-consciousness or self-direction as 
acts to be identified with personality will lead 
us very far astray. The person is that which 
knows itself and its world and which is able 
to act, but no summation of conscious states 
nor of acts can give the person. 

Tt will be seen that to such simple prin- 
ciples have we reduced our definition that it 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 231 


cannot be applied exclusively to humanity. 
Have the animals personality? Doubtless just 
to the extent that they possess a self-conscious- 
ness and can consciously direct their efforts 
after an experienced desire. The tide of 
animal self-consciousness seems to rise with 
all functionings which are in any way social 
and is particularly manifest in mating, care 
of offspring, and gregarious activity. 

But granting the highest possible content 
to that type of personal consciousness which 
we find in the animals, it is obviously far 
removed from that which we discover in man 
because of this very great and often-neglected 
distinction—the presence in man of reflective 
consciousness. This distinguishing feature of 
human personality has in philosophy been 
called consciousness of consciousness. The 
animal self-consciousness reacts to whatever 
impulses move him. Man, though following 
impulses with the greatest rapidity, carries on 
a moral censorship upon his own reaction. 
He has power to discuss his own moods, to 
question the rightness of his own mental atti- 
tude, and to improve it. In other words, his 
responses to external impulses are consciously 
free, and this fact endows him with moral 
responsibility. It is the investiture of the 
soul and lifts all his activities out of the plane 


232 THE REASON IN FAITH 


of the animal world. Whatever animality he 
may fall to, he does wee protest from the 
moral censor. 

This chief distinction Keres man and 
animals is, then, the principal value in man 
and is his prime characteristic. With the 
power of reflective thought has been born 
freedom, for freedom is possible only to a being 
who can relate the past and the future to its 
present consciousness, and who has also power 
to reflect upon it. This freedom is man’s 
unique gift in the world of nature, and it 
enables him to become, within his limited 
field, creative. His creativity is in the nature 
of the case limited to the intelligent com- 
bination of natural forces about him and such 
choices within himself as are creative of moral 
values and character. 

What personality might mean to a supreme 
intelligence which is not limited to time, space, 
and matter for its self-expression it is im- 
possible for the finite person to declare. Its 
apparent power of self-realization without the 
slow and painful method of human learning 
and discipline is too unspeakably great to 
realize, but inasmuch as it must be both 
intelligent and free in order to be creative, it 
must also be moral, and, being moral, must 
be the complete realization of those highest 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 233 


qualities which in man at the best are dim 
and shadowy. 

Our own experience with personality leads 
us too often to assume bodily existence as 
necessary to personality, but to a being not 
holden of the temporal and spatial order, 
personality would not demand bodily form for 
its expression; it would be simply the power 
of self-consciousness and of free creative self- 
direction. 


CREATION ex nthilo — 


The older philosophers used a phrase which 
is at present relatively neglected and indeed 
positively rejected by the scientism of our 
time. This phrase is a hard one because it 
seems to take us outside the realm of fact, 
yet it is a necessary one if there is to be any 
causal explanation. This term the medizevalists 
ascribed to the First Cause as the power to 
create ex nthilo. Far be it from us to attempt 
to revive a term musty with memories of a 
perished latinism and scholasticism, but may 
we be permitted to point to two facts: first, 
that there is no causal explanation without it 
or its equivalent; and, second, we do each of 
us experience it in every truly creative act. 
The object of the ancients in asserting the 
creation out of nothing doctrine was to end 


234 THE REASON IN FAITH 


the infinite regress from cause to cause in 
order to arrive at explanation. The reason 
which is as cogent now as it was then, is that 
we get back to the fundamental reality only 
when we reach the uncaused cause. We do not 
deny the reality of a picture by Rembrandt, 
but there is a deeper reality than the picture, 
namely, Rembrandt himself. And the real 
Rembrandt is deeper than the Rembrandt 
impulses, the Rembrandt environment, the 
Rembrandt heredity or education. All these 
external things might be reproduced without 
producing a Rembrandt. What we have in 
the last analysis was a soul giving unique 
expression to itself in reaction to heredity, 
environment, and impulse. The work pos- 
sesses a unique character in that it contains 
elements of expression which had never before 
been given to the world and will never be again 
achieved by any other individual. Creativity 
means this uniqueness which constitutes Rem- 
brandt’s message to the world and which is 
inexplicable on any naturalistic basis. We can 
only say Rembrandt did it. When we have 
ascribed it to a person, we need and indeed 
can go no farther. We have arrived at a 
first or efficient cause. We have an illustration 
of how to personality alone is given the power 
of creating ex nihilo. 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY = 235 


NEcEssity FoR First CAUSE IN ALL 
CAUSAL EXPLANATION 


The oversight of the necessity of causal 
explanation is the great weakness of modern 
philosophy and of the philosophy upon which 
the greater body of scientists uncritically de- 
pend. We arrange the series of biological 
evolution, for instance, in ascending order. 
We show how close the simple species is to 
the more complex, and then with the ingenuous- 
ness of the magician point to the simple 
organism as the explanation of the complex. 
In other. words, we point to the nonexistent 
as the source of the existent. It is the ancient 
assumption of the ex nthilo doctrine of the 
scholastics, but without either rhyme or reason. 
They grounded their ex nihilo in a personal 
will; we leave it hanging in the air. They 
were careful to make their assumption logical 
and intelligible; we do neither, and we are so 
blind as not to discover the difference between an 
arrangement of facts and an explanation of them. 


PERSONALITY A First Cause 


When we trace an act down to a person we 
come at last to a will which transcended all 
environmental and hereditary influences—or 
might have done so—to choose its reactions. 
We have happened on a first cause. The 


236 THE REASON IN FAITH 


person, then, must be claimed as the place 
of creative causality. Many influences were 
present to lead me to daily exercise in the 
gymnasium to take off cellular tissue from 
where I didn’t like to have it and to put it on 
where I wanted it, but in the last analysis it 
was neither the weight machine, law of gray- 
itation, nor gymnasial environment, but my 
own creative will which was the ultimate cause 
of my expanding biceps. 

To deny creativity in the person brings a 
train of unthinkable consequences. Its imme- 
diate effect is to raise the problem of error 
to a Frankensteinian significance. In such a 
case perception, not being attended by freedom, 
cannot be attended by error and all that I 
think I see is real. This means in the end 
denial of the power of knowledge, a universal 
skepticism. But there is for society another 
consequence worse than this. If I am not 
free, I am not morally responsible. Upon the 
assumption of moral responsibility all social 
and political institutions are built, and in 
accordance with this faith in freedom alone 
can they survive. 


RELATION OF CREATIVITY TO PERSONALITY 


Personality being fundamentally the power 
of self-consciousness and self-direction, must be — 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 237 


developed and enlarged by its correspondences 
and activities. The multiplication of helpful 
correspondences must depend largely upon 
creative effort. Knowledge of the world, of 
life, of history, of one’s fellow men and of 
one’s Own powers can never come as a gift 
or as a free revelation. These can spring only 
as a man creatively grasps them. ‘Truth is 
not something to be poured into the mind. 
To be effective it must be grasped. As the 
personality bends itself upon the pursuit of 
truth, upon the fullest realization of its 
environmental relations, putting itself in tune 
with its world, its fellow men, its God, its own 
highest ideals, and only so, does it grow in 
- power. It may thus be said measurably to 
be self-creative, for what it is springs out of 
its own repeated choices. The richest per- 
sonality is, then, the one with the widest range 
ofsenriching knowledge of sympathetic human 
. contacts and highest moral and spiritual ideals. 


Tue RELEASE OF THE HicgHER PowERs 


There was a Teacher in the long ago who 
declared that the light of the body is the eye 
and that if the eye be single, the whole body 
should be full of light. He was pragmatically 
and psychologically correct in that statement. 
Really creative work, work of the highest 


238 THE REASON IN FAITH 


order, at least, can be done only when the 
whole personality is undividedly working : to- 
ward self-expression. The finer and more 
delicate the task, the higher the powers 
demanded, the more complete must be the 
harmony within the self. There are in our 
day, as in every day, a multitude of distrac- 
tions, which bring “conflicts,” as the psychologist 
names them, and every “conflict’’ is an impedi- 
ment to creative effort. These conflicts, by 
whatever name, spring out of faulty corre- 
spondence with environment. By this I mean 
what might in the very widest sense be called 
environment. It applies to physical and social 
environment and also to the spiritual environ- 
ment of moral responses and ideals.. 


Witra Puysicat ENVIRONMENT 


For creative effort it is necessary for one 
to be in accord with his physical environment. 
The painter cannot have a quarrel with paint 
and canvas and be successful. The successful 
orator cannot despise the people whom he 
hopes to move. Even the stones of the field 
are in league against the agriculturist who 
hates the plow, and the result is seen inevitably 
in the harvest. There was never more futile 
struggle, one so depriving of power, as the 
struggle against environment. The man who 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 239 


would do things if his environment were not 
against him, advertises a fundamental weak- 
ness. His environmental conflict means apathy 
and fruitlessness. It is the old story of the 
king’s son who grasped the sword thrown 
away by the coward because it was broken 
and which, wielded by the prince, carved the 
way to a kingdom. Environment is always 
kindly to him who works with a single purpose. 
Even harsh environment creates an addition 
to his power. 

A great many of the conflicts which prevent 
creative work spring from faulty correspondence 
with society. The story of our jails is largely 
a story of men who have not learned to adjust 
themselves to the social order. Because the 
fundamental organization of society is the 
home, many of these conflicts hinge about 
the sex relations. This has led the Freudians 
and psychoanalysts falsely to assume that all 
internal conflicts spring from sex sources. 
This has led them to strange and nauseating 
perversions in the interpreting of dreams in 
their attempt to trace all neuroses to this 
single source. It is true that much trouble 
comes this way because of the high nervous 
complexity of the sex-functions, creating the 
continuous and fertile field for neurotic man- 
ifestation. As elsewhere, he who would do 


240 THE REASON IN FAITH 


creative work cannot be of a double mind in 
his relations with his fellow men. If he is 
untrue to his friend, his disloyalty becomes a 
blur on his poem, his picture or his sermon. 
By so much does he see less clearly in his 
business. Keeping on correct terms with men, 
both the good and the bad, is one of the condi- 
tions of successful work. A proper hostility 
toward and evaluation of the evil-minded men 
is as much a part of his success as a correct 
appreciation for and attention toward the 
good man. But his contempts can never drop 
to the meanness of personalities without injury 
to himself. Many a man has ruined his power 
for creative work in business because of a 
dual or divided love or sex response, and does 
not realize the sources of his failure, or the 
inevitable failure which must eventually come. 

The deeper fact which lies behind all faulty 
correspondences and which the psychoanalysts 
as a class overlook is, however, the conflict 
in moral and spiritual ideals. This field em- 
braces all the others. If there be spiritual 
health, there will be correct adjustment of the 
person to physical and social environment. 
Without this higher element there cannot be 
complete recovery from neurotic conditions. 
The failure to understand this is fatal to 
Freudianism and constitutes it a moral menace 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 241 


to society. We must not only know the sources 
of our neuroses in order to cure them. When 
a moral attitude is involved that moral atti- 
tude must be corrected. This is the point 
where religion and spiritual ideals are imperative. 
The pathos and tragedy of life lie in the 
countless multitudes who are not at peace 
with their own spiritual ideals. It is impossible 
to estimate the human wreckage and failure 
which spring from this common source. There 
are too many men writing books to which 
they cannot give their souls, making speeches 
which do not express their profoundest con- 
victions, writing alleged poems which do not 
express their worthiest aspirations, attempting 
to build businesses which have but the half- 
consent of their moral ideals, engaged in the 
creation of institutions to which they give the 
hours of life but not their hearts. Out of this 
moral conflict in his divided mind comes poor 
achievement and most frequently downright 
failure. However popular and promising a 
success such may achieve, it can be only 
temporary and passing. It cannot be eternal. 
So much has been said of the impeding 
nature of these psychic conflicts in creative 
effort that it remains necessary but briefly to 
indicate the positive means for the release of 
the higher powers. Here the terms “sub- 


242 THE REASON IN FAITH 


> 


conscious,” or “unconscious mind,” which are 
commonly used, should be avoided as being 
at least misnomers of fact. Nevertheless, an 
atmosphere conducive to highest creativity 
seems to be provided when the individual has 
solved all conflicts, physical, social, and spir- 
itual. In no way can singleness of purpose be 
so completely achieved as by an absolute 
surrender of one’s life, work, aspirations, and 
future to his highest spiritual ideals, or, as 
some would say, to God. All other things then 
fall in line and take their natural places of 
relative importance. With such solution of 
conflicts all fear and the inhibitions of fear 
are wiped out. There is no fear of man nor 
the social order. Even the fear of failure is 
no more because the future is committed in 
faith to a greater power. Under such a psy- 
chology, in which religion has become some- 
thing more than theory or theology and takes 
hold on life, the individual is prepared to do 
creative work. Just to the extent that he is 
able to do this comes the release of mental, 
physical, and spiritual powers. Not only does 
he contend with a whole heart and life with 
undivided interests, but in so far as his God 
is true to the universe, in just that degree he 
has the whole course of nature fighting with 
him. He is grounded in power and he cannot 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 243 


ultimately fail. This was the artistic and 
spiritual significance of the art of the Greeks, 
and of the Gothic of the Middle Ages. Both 
were the result of great spiritual revival. 

In order to get more closely at the psychical 
factors involved one might be permitted per- 
haps to touch upon the relation of such a solu- 
tion of conflicts in singleness of purpose to 
constructive imagination. Whatever future 
psychology may write concerning subconscious 
or unconscious mind, it is certain that the 
imagination is greatly stimulated by this 
cooperation of faculties. And it seems to be 
the fact that when the imagination is pro- 
foundly stimulated, the thoughts and activ- 
ities of moments when attention is mainly 
directed toward outward things, or at least 
the intervals of attention, are all directed at 
what has become the main drive of life. In 
other words, what we want with all our souls 
to be, that we shall eventually become. Under 
the stimulus of imagination even the moments 
of sleep and dreams seem to contribute toward 
the single end. Work is done with less fatigue 
or without fatigue, and solutions are presented 
that seem to the subject as revelations and 
inspirations. Of course such results cannot 
follow unless there has been a careful mastery 
of technique. We must laboriously prepare 


244 THE REASON IN FAITH 


the paths for inspiration, or the inspiration 
will not come. To us this is the significance 
of what is commonly called’ the subconscious 
or unconscious mind. 

Will humanity ever arise to the realization 
of efficiency here set forth? Individuals ocea- 
sionally have in history and_ individuals 
occasionally do. But when they do they 
stand out like beacon-lights of leadership, 
power, invention, and discovery. 

There is no reason, however, why the mass 
of us should not arise to the rank of creative 
personalities. However much we may have 
failed in the past, however much we may have 
allowed previous failures to limit us—and 
there is a certain irrevocableness about these 
limitations—nevertheless as with Tennyson’s 
Ulysses: 

“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; 
That which we are, we are.... 


Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” 


INDEX 


Aspry’s “Search for the Grail,” 180f. 

AssoLuTsE idealism pantheistic, 698. 

AssoLuTisM, pantheistic, 69ff. 

AGNOSTICISM, one source, 37 

ApocaLyptic teachings of Jesus, 196f. 

Arom in modern thought an activity, 74, 136f., 201f. 

ArrriBuTES of God, the moral ones significant, 100f. 

Aurnority, bears its own validation not in its origin but 
in its truth, 61ff.; must be justified in the individual con- 
science, 62ff.; of life supreme, 113f.; subject to judgment 
by the individual, 40f.; why sought, 34E. 


Brsxe, a sufficient guide, 50f.; as revelation, 43 

BreuicaL canon, 51ff.; infallibility not necessary to religious 
life, 49; principles for test of inspiration, 55ff. 

Brucs, “Kingdom of God,” quoted, 93f. 


Canon of the New Testament, 52; of the Old Testament, 52 

Canonicity as test of inspiration, 51ff. 

CaTaAcLysMic speculation, its source, 188f.; teachings of 
Jesus, 191f.; teaching wanting in John’s Gospel, 197f.; 
element in synoptic Gospels, 189f. 

CHANGE in relation to space, time and personality, 78ff. 

CHARACTER, its three laws, 162ff. 

CLEANTHES’ prayer, 134¢. 

CoMTIAN positivism, 19 

ConsclousNEss OF CoNsciousNESS grounds, freedom and 
morality, 232f.; man’s unique possession, 2311. 

CoPERNICAN astronomy, 37, 129 

Councit of Jamnia, 53; of Nice, 53 

CREATION ex nihilo, 233 

Creativity aided by harmony with environment, 238f.; and 
the imagination, 243f.; grows with exercise, 237f.; in- 
apy by harmony with God, 242f.; in personality alone, 

Crocr, “Theory and Practice of History,” 171f. 


Dante, 169f. 
Dezizy of Jesus implied in moral perfection, 101f. 


245 


246 INDEX 


DEMONSTRATION cannot touch profoundest truths, 29; im- 
possible in the field of freedom, 19, 24; in field of the 
self-conscious a matter of values, 22: in the realm of life 
individual and particular, 28ff.; in'science and in religion, 
18f.; scientific, confined to phenomenal succession, 21 

Devi, as an apotheosis of evil, 204f. 

Dunsany, 28 


ELEarTicisM in modern thought, 71f. 

Enocu, Ethiopic and Slavonic books of, 160, 190f. 

Error, evil and pain defined, 203ff.: insoluble by material- 
ism, 204ff.; intellectual, 203f.; its possibility, not its neces- 
sity, important, 205f.; soluble only in personal living, 210f. 

EscHaTouogicat teachings of Jesus, 191ff. 

Evit, as wrong moral choice, 179f., 203ff., 209ff.; distin- 
guished from temptation, 210f.; not independently existent, 
178; not necessary, 178f., 210ff.; soluble only in personal 
living, 211ff. 

Evouvution by uniformity and by cataclysm, 202; dependent 
on purpose, 75f. 

EXISTENCE, as temporal and spatial relation, 78f.; creative, 
TAf.; creative or static, 71ff.; meaning and nature of, 64 

EXPLANATION by accident of matter and motion, 66f.; by 
the Absolute, 69ff.; completed only in first cause, 235£.; 
by causal intelligence, 77ff.; by description, 67f.; by func- 
tion, 66ff.; by. mechanism, 65ff.; by personality, 71ff.; 
of impersonalistic type commits to the infinite regress, 
70f.; two kinds, personal and impersonal, 65ff. 


Fare and the trap-door spider, 218 

FartH, as nature and function of man, 14; necessary to pro- 
foundest values, 30ff. 

Fauuacy of explanation by description, 67ff. 

FATHERHOOD oF Gop, interpreted by Jesus and the prophets, 
84ff.; in the conception of Messiahship, 91ff.; in the par- 
able of the Prodigals, 90ff.; Jesus’ idea unique, 84.; Jewish 
doctrine of, 84ff.; realized through sonship, 87ff.; related 
to incarnation, 84ff.; taught by Jesus, 86ff. 

First cause can be traced only ‘to personality, 235f.; cause 
demanded in causal explanation, 235f.; cause in human 
experience, 234f.; cause ungrounded, 233f. 

FREEDOM and Science, 14: dependent on reflection, 232: its 
denial only theoretical, 19; necessary to moral character, 
175f., 183f. 

FREUDIANISM, a moral menace, 240f. 

FuNcTIONISM, a tautology, 66; as a type of impersonal 
explanation, 66ff. 


INDEX 24'7 


Forure PunisHMeNT based on personality, 160f.; in the 
teachings of Jesus, 159ff.; the presence of love to the 
unloving, 169f.; through vanishing of temporal and spatial 
order, 167f. 


Gop, both immanent and transcendent, 200f.; His attributes 
temporal, spatial and moral, 86ff.; living as source of 
revelation, 42f., 58f.; not demonstrable by science, 14; 
Sear 232f.; relation to temporal and spatial order, 
232k. 


Ho.y Spirit and the mystics, 116f.; as a personalization of 
Deity, 117f.; as ground of authority, 124f.; a practical 
guide, 118f., 126f.; as taught by Jesus, 95f.; attends on 
moral and spiritual honesty, 121f.; doctrine of, a recog- 
nition of the common nature of goodness, 120f.; meaning 
and function, 115ff.; necessary to the genius of Chris- 
tianity, 120f. 

Honesty, mental, necessary to religion, 122f. 


IMMANENCE and transcendence not incompatible, 171f., 199f.; 
and transcendence in history, 171f. 

ImMoRTALITY alone satisfying to human soul, 221.; beyond 
scientific proof, 224f.; consciousness of in presence of 
highest type of life, 219f.; conviction of, arises from time- 
transcending character of experience, 215ff.; grounded in 
demand for persistence of human values, 220f.; grounded 
in the functioning of the human spirit, 214f.; misrepre- 
sented as future only, 222; must be personal, 223f.; not 
the result of dream and apparition, 215f.; in accord with 
present life and growth, 221ff. | 

INCARNATION alone can solve the problem of evil, 108f.; 
destructive nature of denial, 99f., 104.; exalts man, 95f.; 
necessary to absolute moral perfection, 101ff.; not de- 
grading to God, 99f.; proved by life, 102f.; reasonable, 
82ff.; relation to consciousness of Divine Fatherhood, 84ff. 

INDIVIDUALISM as an historic movement, 228ff. 

INFALLIBILITY not necessary to trustworthiness, 49f.; not to 
be affirmed of anything human, 47ff.; subject to human 
judgment, 49f. 

INSPIRATION, a matter of degree, 51; and free-will, 41; and 
infallibility, 47f.; does not usurp place of knowledge, 45f.; 
has for its purpose, life, 60f.; not of past alone, 41f., 59; 
is spiritual vision, 45; its meaning, 40ff., 44ff.; its tests, 
42, 50f.; judged by author’s claim, 54f.; by biblical prin- 
ciples, 55ff.; by canonicity, 51ff.; by the character of the 
prophet, 57f.; by personal conviction, 56f.; by results, 57 

INTELLIGENCE in the cell or behind it, 76f.; in the world- 
ground, 80f., 136f. 


248 INDEX 


Jesus and Jewish Law, 38f.; Jesus’ teaching of the Father- 
hood of God, 86ff.; Jesus’ teachings on future punish- 
ment, 159f.; Jesus’ temptation real, 177; Jesus’ test of 
inspiration, 57f.; Jesus’ thought of the Holy Spirit, 95f.; 
Jesus’ thought of Messiahship, 91ff. 


KNOWLEDGE as specialization, 17; must include the whole 
of life, 18 
Korzysski’s “time-binding,” 217 


Marrer and motion as causal, 67f.; as activity, 201 

MATERIALISM cannot account for error, 204ff. 

MECHANISM, an impersonal type of explanation, 65f.; hostile 
to true science, 66; makes quality an illusion, 72ff.; power- 
less before problem of error, 204ff. 

MEsSsIAHSHIP, its meaning to Jesus, 91ff.; 190f.; Jewish con- 
ception, 92f., 190. 

Moratity dependent on reflection and freedom, 232f. 


Naturg, the ally of righteousness, 81; based in cataclysmic 
thought, 1736. 

NatuRAL law, sanctity of, 136f., 152f.; selection inadequate, 75 

Nevrosss cured by spiritual ideals, 240f. ; 


Otp TrestTaMENT prayers, 133f. 


Patn, a disciplinary factor in life, 203ff.; and the advance 
of civilization, 207f.; as a problem of life, 28; justified only 
in practical results, 210ff.; possibility of pain fundamental 
to health, 207f.; related to social advance, 208f. 

PAaNTHEISM of absolute idealism, 69f. 

ParaBLE of Dives, 156, 161, 165; of the Dragnet, 160f.;: of 
the Figtree, 163, 194; of the house on the sand, 89; of 
husbandmen, 152; of the Prodigals, 90, 154; of the rich 
fool, 155; of Tares, 160; of Talents, 164; of Virgins, 151, 
162; of wedding supper, 151, 193 

PERSONALITY, as related to change, 78ff.; creative, necessary 
to morality, 236f.; in animals, 231; in man distinguished 
from that of animals, 231; in the Supreme Being, 232f.; 
in simple terms, self-consciousness and self-direction, 
230ff.; split, and sin, 168f.; subject to growth, 236f.; the 
ony first cause, 235f.; the synthesis of matter and spirit, 

Si. 

PHENOMENAL Nature of scientific data, 20f., 136f. 

Puito Jupaus and trinitarianism, 115 

Positivism, 19 

Positivistrc denial of reality to the immaterial, 20 

PRAGMATISM, 33 


INDEX 249 


PRAYER and natural law, 129ff., 137ff.; and the world order, 
128ff., 139ff.; apathy toward, 128f.; a source of power, 
144f.; cannot be selfish, 147f.; importunity in, 131f.; its 
cooperative nature, 141f.; its three-fold nature, 139; its 
value, 132; of Cleanthes, 134f.; not a changing of the 
Supreme order, 131f., 138f.; puts the individual in coopera- 
tion with God, 141f.; teaches the Supreme will, 140f.; to 
secure adjustment to nature, 139f.; to secure accord with 
the Divine mind, 132; to win an end sought, 142f.; of the 
Old Testament, 133f.; typical of history, 132ff. 

PrRoor in science and in religion, 18, 83 

Proor, ScrIENTIFIC, inapplicable to the conscious, 24; to 
immortality, 224f. 

PsycuicaL “conflict” from maladjustment, 238f.; research 
materialistic in temper, 224 

Psycuouoey of the materialistic type, 23 

ProLeMaic astronomy, 37 


Quauity made illusory by mechanists, 72f. 


Reaurism and knowledge, 206f. 

Reauiry, in mechanistic theory, 65f. 

REDEMPTION, cataclysmic view, 173ff.; averse to freedom, 
174f.; dualistic, 178ff.; reverses the Divine character, 179f.; 
developmental view, 181ff.; emphasizes universal char- 
acter of, 184f.; sets forth the ethical side of redemption, 
182; shows cooperative nature of, 183f.; must include 
nature, 187f.; must include the present world, 186f.; not 
an end in itself, 188; redemption only in the moral will, 175f. 

Rewattvity, as used by the Sophists, 33f.; its strength in 
positing a universe of relations, 34f. 

Reuierovs statistics of doubtful value, 27f. 

REMBRANDT, a creator, 234f. 

REPENTANCE includes forsaking of sin, 112f. 

REVELATION, its meaning, 42f.; limited by human under- 
standing, 43f.; Supreme, moral, 102f. 

Rousseau as apostle of individualism, 228 


Sctence and freedom, 14; in strict sense inapplicable to 
religion, 13-14, 22; and religion in agreement, 138f., 152ff.; 
of religion, 13 

ScientiFic hypothesis, 21 

Screnrism as a form of worship, 18; overemphasis of, 13 

Sin, a dwarfing of personality, 154f.; an offense against 
others, 155f.; of jealousy, 158f.; unpardonable, 157f.; a 
failure to cooperate with God, 150f.; and divided_per- 
sonality, 168f.; Jesus’ doctrine of, 150ff.; that which offends 
God, man or better self, 149f. 


250 INDEX 


Skeptics, who deny knowledge or defend truth, 32 

Soctau statistics must be carefully evaluated, 25; uses of 
pain, 208f. 

Sonsuip to God, its meaning, 87. 

Sopuists, 33 

SPECIALIZATION tends to short-sightedness, 18 

SPACE and time, 78f.; and time not independent realities, 79; 
time and change, 78ff.; time, change and personality, 78ff. 

Stevenson, “The Christmas Sermon,” 168 

Stoic prayer of Cleanthes, 134f. 

STaTiIstics to be received with caution, 25ff. 


TEMPTATION of Jesus real, 177f. 

Time and space, 78f.; experience leads to belief in immor- 
tality, 216f.; transcending demand of nature not disap- 
pointed, 220f.; transcendence peculiar to human con- 
sciousness, 218 

Trut# always subject to test, 35; human and fragmentary, 
33f.; justified by its fruits, 33: ‘of any kind divine, 15; of 
deepest order realized by faith, 29; of Gospel growing, 97f.; 
persistent, 14; progressively realized, 36; religion a develop- 
ment, 38; rests on internal foundations, 39f.; spiritual, 
eternal, 15 


Vaturs, human necessary to normal life, 30f.; the data in 
moral and religious demonstration, 22 
VisRATORY theory of matter and sense, 72ff. - 


Westey, CHARuEs, inspired hymnist, 40; John and the 
Psalter, 51 
Worup-GRowunpD as intelligent, 80f. 


ZENO and the paradoxes, 78f. 


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